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Session II Official support for ethical and socially responsible community-based initiatives

By Hep Monatzeder (City Mayor, City of Munich) and Heinz Schulze (Coordinator of Agenda 21 „One World“)

Munich has been one of the few cities in Germany, and perhaps even Europe-wide, where a specific scope of duties was established for „One World“ activities within the framework of the Local Agenda-21 process.

Under the motto „No harm should go out to the world from Munich“ many impulses have been launched and ideas were developed concerning the question how Munich can contribute towards international social justice.

Although the consultation process of the Munich Agenda 21 has long been completed and the forum „One World“ does no longer exist as such, we are happy to say that the good connection between the Munich One-World groups and the City of Munich still continues and we were able to launch some projects together which have meanwhile been followed by many European towns. The following approach has turned out to be effective:

Examples for concrete themes:

Especially our latest project on exploitative child labour has shown that the legal framework is not always favourable for the cities to take a stand for international social justice - although the cities are quite willing to do so, as numerous inquiries about our activities have shown.

However, with the modernization of purchasing regulations on the EU level something has got underway – a movement which will hopefully continue on the national level.

It is true that the cities are by no means able to eliminate injustices of distribution through their purchasing practices thus abolishing poverty and child labour, but they can certainly serve as a good example by taking a leadership role and stimulate further activities on the part of the industry and consumers.