Promoting human rights locally is one of this programme's key goals. To ensure the right to the city and citizen rights, this department will be launching not just internal initiatives for planning specific human-rights policies but also external initiatives for raising awareness, training and supporting human-rights organisations.

We understand citizenship to be completely unconnected with the concept of nationality or legal residence. Citizen rights include the rights of everyone living in Barcelona, irrespective of their administration status or passport. Furthermore, it also means working on specific, local aspects of rights, putting special emphasis on the ones that the municipal authority has most jurisdiction over, but without forgetting that all rights fall under the City Council’s jurisdiction.

It is within this line that the content of the European Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights in the City will be implemented, as a basic regulatory and reference text for implementing citizen rights.

This line of action provides for several types of specific initiatives and measures:

• Revising municipal regulations in accordance with human-rights standards.
• Political influence on regulations that affect human rights but which fall outside municipal jurisdiction.
• General campaigns for promoting human rights.
• Providing training and skills acquisition to citizens, organisations and the administration.
• Improving municipal mechanisms for ensuring human rights.