On September 14, CEDAW Rising Co-Founder Mary Hansel joined Foreign Policy for America’s panel entitled “The New Human Rights Agenda Is Local.”
Mary’s fellow panelists were Occidental College Professor Anthony Tirado Chase and Professor Joshua Cooper of the Hawai‘i Institute for Human Rights and U.S. Human Rights Network.
The discussion explored the evolving role of cities and counties in advancing international human rights. Mary highlighted CEDAW Rising’s work shaping local CEDAW adoption and implementation, with a focus on community participation, intersectional data and whole-of-government gender mainstreaming.
The panel also examined the emergence of “city multilateralism” and how local governments can connect across national borders, participate more directly in international human rights processes and contribute to a more inclusive approach to U.S. foreign policy.
The conversation reinforced a central premise of CEDAW Rising’s work: local governments are not peripheral to human rights; they are primary sites of implementation.
CEDAW Rising 