The Recognition of the Right to the City as an Environmental Right by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

The event aims to bring together prominent legal experts to discuss - within the framework of the Latin American Agreement of Escazú - the creation of a new legal paradigm that proposes the integration of the Right to the City as part of the Right to the Environment, through an interpretation carried out by the Court Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IACHR) and UN Habitat.
In March 2023, the governments of Chile and Colombia, based on the American Convention on Human Rights, presented to the IACHR a “Request for Advisory Opinion”, in order for it to issue mandatory criteria for Latin America and the Caribbean on “Emergency Climate and Human Rights”.
UN Habitat Latin America and the College of Urban Jurisprudence of Latin America were convened to issue a legal proposal to guide the criteria of the IACHR.
The IACHR can constitute a source of high-impact urban and environmental law, through jurisprudence and resolutions for Latin America and the Caribbean, which constitute the ideal space for the development of legal instruments that address climate emergencies due to a significant degree of similarity of its social and judicial systems, history, languages, difficulties, urban, climatic and environmental opportunities.
In this event, a new paradigm of legal science is presented and it proposes the adoption of a broad, comprehensive vision of the ENVIRONMENT concept, which surpasses a biological vision, considering it not only as a set of natural elements that determine the characteristics of a place, but also includes the human, social, cultural system that constitutes what we call the urban environment. Likewise, it proposes the integration of the Right to the City - typical of Urban Planning Law - as part of the Right to the Environment, through an interpretation of international instruments on human rights, especially the Escazú Agreement, carried out by the Inter-American Court of Rights. Humans, with the participation of UN Habitat Latin America and the Caribbean.
The event constitutes a historic opportunity so that the interpretative function of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights can lay the foundations for the creation of a new urban legal paradigm, which serves as a parameter for the definition of obligations according to the reality of the States that make up the American Continent to confront the crisis and climate emergencies faced by human settlements, and also constitute the triggering point for the management of a New Regional Urban Institutionality, through the celebration of a Latin American Urban Planning Agreement, since 80% of the habitants of the American Continent reside in cities, urban and metropolitan areas, and human settlements.