International Meeting for Equal Cities

Every year, the G20 brings together heads of state, finance ministers and central banks from 19 countries and the European Union to discuss and make decisions about the global economy, whose impacts are felt throughout the world without taking into account the demands and proposals of social movements and progressive local authorities. Its next summit will be held in Buenos Aires,Argentina, at the end of November of this year.

In this context, the mayors of Buenos Aires and Paris -as members of the megacities network known as C40- launched the Urban 20 initiative. Its promoters intend it to become a regular event (Tokyo will be the next venue in May 2019) to raise the profile of urban problems and strengthen the role of cities in international agendas. The U20 will meet in the same city, just one month before the G20.

In face of this event, social organizations, grassroots movements, civil society networks, academics and local authorities committed to equality, human rights and sustainability, we propose to show the other faces and the other voices of our cities. We want to address the root causes that generate impoverishment, exclusion and inequality and exchange experiences of resistance and transformative proposals from neighbourhoods and urban groups.

In front of urban extractivism, the city of the capital and the dispossession, we put before us the city of the inhabitants, for the care of people and nature. With the baggage of networking, agreements and learning that have allowed us the world, regional and thematic social forums during the last two decades, we intend to advance in the implementation and conquest of the right to the city and the deepening of the new municipalism as a tool of the alert and mobilized citizenship.

This event aims to contribute to the monitoring of the obligations and commitments incorporated in the new Urban Agenda (Quito, October 2016) as well as the Declaration of cities for the right to housing and the right to the city (New York, July 2018) and The Shift campaign, promoted by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing with the support of United Cities and Local and Regional Governments (UCLG). Because we know that without our participation and permanent evaluation these contents become a dead letter or end up liquefied in neoliberal agendas that harass us with more and worse of the same.

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The International Meeting for Equal Cities will take place from October 28 to 31 in the city of Buenos Aires, linked to the World Zero Evictions Days and the World Day for the Right to the City.

It will include a series of activities such as a cultural event, a workshop on the right to the city and thematic panels on urban inequalities, the care of common goods, feminist urbanism, the future of work, the integration of migrants and refugees,the role and the challenges of intermediate cities and subnational financing.

During the Meeting there will be an Assembly of social movements and a roundtable with progressive mayors from different cities of the world. Likewise, there will be a collective position document to be presented before the Urban20.

We call for the social organizations of the G20 countries to participate in this Meeting and we urge the local authorities involved in the U20 to include civil society representatives in their delegations.

Centro de Estudios y Acción por la Igualdad (CEAPI)

Confederación de Trabajadores de la Economía Popular (CTEP-CABA)

Habitar Argentina

Coalición Internacional para el Hábitat (HIC)

Plataforma Global por el Derecho a la Ciudad Alianza Internacional de Habitantes (AIH)

Secretaría Latinoamericana de la Vivienda y el Hábitat Popular (SeLVIHP)

TECHO Internacional

Red Mujer y Hábitat de América Latina

Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO)

Comisión Huairou

Instituto POLIS

Ministerio Público de la Defensa de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires

Defensoría del Pueblo de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires

Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales Asociación Civil por la Igualdad y la Justicia

Frente de Organizaciones de Tierra, Infraestructura y Vivienda de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (FOTIVBA)

Madre Tierra Corriente Feminista

La Ría Federación de Villas, Núcleos y Barrios Marginados (FEDEVI)

La Boca Propone y Resiste

Comisión de Hábitat y Género de Habitar Argentina

Urbana TeVé

Proyecto 7

Centro de Intercambio y Servicios Cono Sur Argentina (CISCSA)

Articulación Feminista Marcosur

Foro Nacional de Reforma Urbana de Brasil

Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales

Proyecto Riachuelo