The World Human Rights Cities Forum

The paper at hand presents the process and methodology applied for preparing the Human Rights Reports of the City of Graz, outlines the key findings, and highlights the contribution Human Rights Reports can generally make to identify and mitigate the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic at the local level. [...] It became the main objective of the 2021 HRR to mitigate the identified challenges of the previous report by means of a set of concrete recommendations from a human rights perspective to strengthen the overall resilience of the City of Graz. [...] In line with the OECD’s call for context-related resilience strategies, the members of the HRC decided to put the emphasis of the 2021 HRR on Article 25: the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being, including housing, of the UDHR.3 Focusing on this human right is not a 3 Article 25 (1) UDHR states: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health. [...] Implications of the HRR The well-established practice of compiling the HRR by the HRC of the City of Graz revealed its promising potential as an effective instrument for monitoring the human rights situation of the city in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. [...] Conclusion This paper set out to present the methodology and process of the practice of the HRR of the HRC of the City of Graz as an effective means to identify and mitigate the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic at the local level.