Introduction

This chapter focuses on human rights cities as sites of human rights practice, using York (UK) as a case study. The main argument articulated in the chapter, and illustrated with reference to the York Human Rights City Network (YHRCN), is that cities are at the forefront of new forms of human rights practice, which are moving away from singular, top down, state-focused strategies in favour of multi-dimensional, multi-actor, contextual and bottom-up, grassroots approaches.

As such, the main question addressed by the chapter is: Why and how are cities driving new forms of human rights practice? Secondary questions include: In the context of globalisation and complex systems of governance, how do we understand the emergence of cities as sites of protest and human rights activism? Can cities bark back, and contest regressive national or international-level policy and discourse? Why do some cities embrace the human rights discourse and not others, and which actors matter in defining city-based human rights agendas?

This chapter starts by setting out the shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’, and why this has led to a rise in city-based politics and activism. The second section assesses dilemmas relating to human rights implementation, arguing that implementation requires engagement with multiple actors involved in governance, and diverse strategies, beyond classic human rights strategies of litigation and naming and shaming. In this context, the section explores challenges relating to localising rights, culture and framing. The remainder of the chapter assesses the work of YHRCN through the lenses of governance and human right implementation. The main argument is that in York a participatory indicator project focusing on economic and social rights is being used to try and move away from top down, state-led participation to community driven ‘structured engagement’ (Marshall, Ward and Browne Reference Marshall, Ward and Browne2014) and that this represents a challenge to mainstream city governance arrangements and human rights practice.

Cities as sites of human rights governance

Governance refers to the processes through which a plurality of private economic and civil society actors are incorporated into areas of policy making, administration and implementation that had until recently been considered the purview of the state (Swyngedouw Reference Swyngedouw2005). The shift to governance was underpinned by the neoliberal turn and economic globalisation in developed countries from the 1970s. It was driven by economic restructuring which saw a retrenchment of the welfare state and a withdrawal of the state from economic interventionism. These developments have seen the rise of powerful private interests that remain largely unaccountable to the public while the privatisation of state services (e.g. water, health and prisons) has led to non-state actors playing a significant role in service delivery and protecting key human rights (De Feyter Reference De Feyter2006).

The United Kingdom has experienced the fragmentation of service delivery systems, and much debate has ensued about the position of the ‘unitary’ state and its ‘hollowing out’ as well as the character of multi-level governance (Jessop Reference Jessop and Kennett2004a; Rhodes Reference Rhodes2007). From the 1980s onwards, service delivery responsibilities in the United Kingdom were increasingly transferred or shared with private and non-governmental actors while top-down distributive forms of urban development were replaced with initiatives to mobilise the private sector, and more recently by efforts to draw international capital into urban areas (Fuller and Geddes Reference Fuller and Geddes2008; Rhodes et al. Reference Rhodes, Carmichael, McMillan and Massey2003).

While internationally the economic power of the neoliberal city has reached new heights in this contemporary period (Theodore, Peck and Brenner Reference Theodore, Peck, Brenner, Bridge and Watson2011), such power has been accompanied by greater inequality between and within cities – poorer ‘periphery’ zones have emerged alongside ‘core’ urban zones in which the key socio-economic assets are more highly concentrated (Brenner Reference Brenner2004). An example from York is the very high property prices, in comparison to the surrounding region. Low-income migrants cannot find accommodation, while low income families have to live on the periphery of the city.

Despite suggestions of state decline (e.g. Rhodes Reference Rhodes1997, Reference Rhodes2007), the state remains a significant governance actor, retaining responsibility for both the oversight of governance mechanisms and the maintenance of social cohesion. The role of local authorities in the provision of entitlements, such as housing, has become ever more important as powers and responsibilities are transferred away from the ‘core executive’ in situations of decentralisation and devolution (ICHRP 2005). As a diversity of private and civil society actors are brought into governance networks, political authorities at different scales, including at the city level, retain a significant metagovernance role – that is, they set the ‘ground rules for governance and the regulatory order’ through which governance actors operate (Jessop Reference Jessop, Bache and Flinders2004b: 65). Metagovernance implies the steering by political authorities of ‘multiple agencies, institutions and systems that are both operationally autonomous from one another and structurally coupled through various forms of reciprocal interdependence’ (Jessop Reference Jessop and Kennett2004a: 19). Following Kooiman and Jentoft's (Reference Kooiman and Jentoft2009) delineation between substantive governance ‘choices’ on the one hand and the metagovernance values, norms, and principles on the other, human rights practice should aim at making human rights explicit and coherent at multiple levels of metagovernance so as to guide the sorts of governance ‘choices’ and decisions that are made at and across different scales. In human rights terms a key state obligation is the duty to ‘protect’, an oversight and regulatory obligation.

The power of local government in the context of globalisation remains contested terrain. Explorations into the shift from urban government to governance have revealed a weakening of political power for local democratic authorities and city inhabitants with respect to the choices and decisions that shape the city (Swyngedouw, Moulaert and Rodriguez Reference Swyngedouw, Moulaert, Rodriguez, Brenner and Theodore2002; Theodore, Peck and Brenner Reference Theodore, Peck, Brenner, Bridge and Watson2011). For local authorities in the United Kingdom, Newman (2014) argues that the space for challenging ‘dominant forces’ is much more limited today than it had been historically, such as during the Thatcher years, when Labour-controlled authorities had the capacity to resist hegemonic ‘ideological projects’. Geddes and Sullivan's study of local political leadership globally suggest multiple configurations of local leadership that range from accommodation of national projects to overt opposition, varying in respect to context and social base, leadership principles, policies, style and tactics, state forms and tensions and contradictions. More concretely, it can be argued that local authorities retain influence in five key areas: as a democratic arena, employer, service provider, public contractor and rule maker.Footnote ¹

A further branch of literature focuses on urban activist responses and the right to the city, and its impacts in contesting political authorities, projects and policies at different scales (Long Reference Long2013; Leitner et al. Reference Leitner, Peck, Sheppard, Leitner, Peck and Sheppard2007). While cities have certainly been focal points for political and social activism for generations, in this contemporary period it can be argued that they represent ‘the principal sites and stakes for the generation of oppositional movements and alternative social visions’ against urban backgrounds of public sector austerity, poverty, inequality and social exclusion (Leitner, Peck and Sheppard Reference Leitner, Peck, Sheppard, Leitner, Peck and Sheppard2007: 318; Sites Reference Sites, Leitner, Peck and Sheppard2007). The formation of new notions of citizenship which operate above and below the national scale is also fuelled by a new politics of identity and difference, as movements advance claims to new rights around social, environmental and spatial justice (Purcell Reference Purcell2003; Yiftachel Reference Yiftachel, Brenner, Marcuse and Mayer2012). They are frequently based on political identities such as ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender and age, homelessness and so on. Such developments begin to answer the question as to why cities have emerged as sites of protest and human rights activism.

Arguably York has seen Labour Party City Council and local civil society-led attempts to resist the ‘hegemonic ideological project’ of austerity in the United Kingdom in recent years. A Fairness Commission was launched in July 2011 as an independent advisory body to the City of York Council, concluding with a report in September 2012. It aimed to look into how to make York a fairer place to live and work, developing a vision for York focussed on social and economic inequalities.Footnote ² Through two phases, public consultation and themed select committee meetings, the Commission produced a report entitled ‘A better York for everyone’ proposing ten fairness principles, making seven headline recommendations and commending over 100 ‘Ideas for Action’ (City of York Council 2012). Further, to date Islington, Newcastle, Liverpool, Blackpool, Sheffield and Tower Hamlets have instigated Fairness Commissions (Newby and Denison Reference Newby and Denison2012).

To give one concrete example of progressive change, building on the Fairness Commission report and its recommendation to turn York into a Living Wage City, steps have been made to promote awareness and the benefits of a living wage in the city. Within the city of York more than a quarter of jobs are in low pay sectors.Footnote ³ A Living Wage Coalition was formed in York in 2013, while actions taken by the Council have included extending the living wage to council staff and workers and resolving to take steps towards a living wage for apprentices (Yorkshire Post 2014). More recently the Living Wage Commission has recognised York as a ‘great example’ of an area with a ‘thriving’ campaign for a living wage (City of York Council 2014). The campaign for a living wage has gone national, providing one means of ‘barking back’ to regressive national level policies.

To conclude, the shift from government to governance has the potential to reconfigure politics and activism at the level of the city. Human rights cities can be seen as championing a new form of local governance – involving multiple actors, but in which the state retains an important role and set of responsibilities; open to complex relationships, where actors collaborate in certain areas but may be in opposition in others; and rooted in shared metagovernance values, such as non-discrimination. A set of inclusive processes and shared norms should inform decision making and the distribution of resources, rather than purely political and economic bargaining and vested interests. The next section explores in more detail challenges facing human rights implementation and practice in the context of contemporary globalisation and governance arrangements.

Cities as sites of human rights implementation

In recent years, human rights has sought to address the above-mentioned challenges of globalisation and governance as central to implementation and practice. At the city level three issues are crucial to this task: How to link global standards with local contexts? How to deal with culture and diversity? And how to frame human rights so that the discourse both resonates with local settings and engages or mobilises local stakeholders?

With regard to global–local links, Clark conceptualises norms as ‘standards of behaviour defined in terms of rights and obligations, resting on beliefs of right and wrong’ (Clark Reference Clark2001: 30). There is an extensive literature on how norms travel and become domesticated in national and local settings, with models including ‘the boomerang pattern’ (Keck and Sikkink Reference Keck and Sikkink1998: 12–13), and the ‘spiral model’ (Risse, Ropp and Sikkink Reference Risse, Ropp and Sikkink1999). Finnemore and Sikkink argue that norms emerge and evolve in a ‘patterned lifecycle’ (Finnemore and Sikkink Reference Finnemore and Sikkink1998: 888) enabling them to become influential in international politics. Specifically, they state that the evolution of international norms occurs in three composite stages: norm emergence, norm cascade and internalisation. According to the ‘norm lifecycle’, norm compliance is the result of socialisation and persuasion. Human rights leaders act as agents of socialisation by pressurising states to adopt new standards of appropriate behaviour in their domestic policies and agreements.

On the one hand, local actors and activists, including those based in cities, are key players in the socialisation cycle, identifying issues on the ground and framing them within the existing rights framework. Applying a human rights framework in local settings can enable communities to gain recognition for their difficulties whilst further developing the national, regional and international understanding of human rights norms. However, this raises the question of whether cities can act more independently as generators of norms, with human rights leaders at local level initiating norm lifecycles that contest or complement national and international level discourses or understandings of human rights (see Kamuf Ward, this volume).Footnote ⁴ The YHRCN has started from local priorities in its indicator project and seeks support from international and national human rights law to address these priorities in a light-touch, strategic way; rather than starting with these laws and attempting to apply or translate them in local realities (see below).

With reference to culture and diversity, support for difference is contained within existing human rights treaties and mechanisms, notably through the margin of appreciation that is key in interpreting the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), and through the progressive realisation of, for instance, social and economic rights. According to the margin of appreciation, states are granted some leeway or discretion when assessing how the ECHR should be applied domestically (European Commission of Human Rights 1958). This enables states to take into account their culture, history, politics and legal systems when interpreting the Convention (Moeckli, Shah and Sivakumaran Reference Moeckli, Shah and Sivakumaran2010: 133). De Feyter cites the margin of appreciation as support for the localisation of human rights (De Feyter Reference De Feyter2006: 9).

Further support for difference is identified in the implementation of economic and social rights through the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Article 2(1) of the ICESCR comments that party states should take steps ‘with a view to achieving progressively the full realisation of the rights recognised…by all appropriate means’. Positive rights outlined within the ICESCR require State Parties to ‘take steps to the maximum of its available resources’. This places rights in the hands of those who make budgetary decisions or provide services such as medical treatment, housing and education. Within this framework, local communities’ work is vital to assist national governments in prioritising how to use resources and manage human rights compliance.

Through mechanisms such as the margin of appreciation and progressive realisation, human rights provides vehicles for the negotiation of difference, and for local communities to shape the interpretation of human rights. That said, while human rights may sanction certain kinds of difference between states, it is less clear what sorts of difference it permits within states. The rise of human rights cities raises this question as a challenge for the human rights movement.

Since the ECHR was transposed into domestic law in the United Kingdom through the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998, there has been widespread acknowledgement that the Act lacks popular support. The Equality and Human Rights Commission, established under the Equalities Act 2006, highlights this difficulty stating:

Politics and the media in the United Kingdom are currently dominated by a ‘meta-narrative’ arguing that the United Kingdom is under threat from the negative impact of human rights legislation. A wide range of issues generate defensive policy responses when they are aligned with this narrative (crime, immigration, terrorism, unpopular human rights protections). There is no equivalently pervasive counter-narrative arguing for social justice. A genuine ‘culture of human rights’ has the potential to be such a counter-narrative.

The issues outlined above reproduce a classic challenge to human rights implementation, in which laws at national or international levels are largely seen as ends in themselves, as self-implementing, ignoring the social, political, economic and geographical elements which are key to implementation. Human rights cannot be fully effective in the United Kingdom until they are appropriated and adapted by local authorities and communities (De Feyter Reference De Feyter2006; Merry Reference Merry2006b: 227). A culture of human rights requires a general belief among society that human rights are central to their everyday lives and everyday problem solving. How is a ‘culture of human rights’ created? One strategy would be to stress the local, as the site where rights are violated and protected (De Feyter Reference De Feyter2006). Lipschultz notes that individuals have to engage in ‘collective action for the defence of their rights’ only when these rights are being threatened at the local level (Lipschultz Reference Lipschultz1996: 39).

Another way of building a ‘culture of human rights’ is through careful and creative framing. In the processes of ‘vernacularisation’ and translation referred to by Merry, framing is vital, namely re-packaging and communicating rights so they are familiar and apply locally (Merry Reference Merry2006b). A well-chosen frame can assist in localising human rights and building solidarity, as frames are closely connected to hidden cultural codes and our ‘moral systems’ (Carini Reference Carini2013).Footnote ⁶ The framing process involves three integral tasks: diagnosing the problem, proposing the solution and motivating collective action (Snow and Benford Reference Snow, Benford, Klandermans and Tarrow1988: 199). Though frames most often easily resonate with people who have shared cultural codes and ‘moral systems’, efforts to go beyond merely preaching to the converted require activists and leaders to engage in processes of ‘frame transformation’ in which ‘new values…[are] planted and nurtured, old meanings or understandings jettisoned, and erroneous beliefs or “misframings” reframed’ (Snow et al. Reference Snow, Rochford, Worden and Benford1986: 473, see also Oomen in this volume).

Human rights are, in themselves, a type of frame, so local activists and organisations can choose human rights when deciding how to ‘package and present’ their ideas. As demonstrated by the case study given by Berg (this volume) of the Netherlands, human rights are not automatically or routinely chosen by civil society; therefore, we must ask why a human rights frame should and would be chosen, considering that there are many alternatives, such as good governance or gender equality (Oomen in the introduction to this volume).

There are a number of reasons to choose a human rights framing. First, choosing a human rights frame can be a matter of shared principle and international resonance. Human rights have, after all, been described by Ignatieff (Reference Ignatieff2001: 53) as the ‘lingua franca of global moral thought’. If an important process in framing is to resonate with and generate shared beliefs and values, it is significant that human rights can be described in this way. York is eager to be seen as an ‘international city’,Footnote ⁷ so the global nature of a human rights framing is a potential strength. These qualities suggest that human rights is well placed to inform the values of metagovernance in the current era of globalisations. A second benefit to a human rights framing is that it reasserts the role of the state and democratic decision-making mechanisms in a context where these are increasingly side-lined.

However, there are also challenges associated with championing a human rights framing. It may be seen as too adversarial, remote to people's everyday lives or as too legal and technical. As elsewhere, activists in York do not have to adopt a human rights frame. One alternative possibility is ‘fairness and equality’ as employed by York Fairness Commission (see above). Another alternative is a narrower frame, such as racial justice. A tension between human rights and racial justice emerged during three conversations on racial justice and human rights convened by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) in 2014, involving York civil society groups. Advocates of a racial justice framing were concerned that their issue would get diluted or side-lined under a human rights framework, as they felt it had often been in the past in York. Supporters of a human rights frame argued that its strength was its breadth, including racial justice but also other concerns, and its ability to identify links between issues through analysis assessing indivisibility and intersectionality. A special meeting was convened purely to discuss framing tensions (Minutes, 3 September 2014).Footnote ⁸ Again, this example speaks to a classic advocacy dilemma: how to link the specific and the general, and which strategy best achieves support and leverage with both those undertaking the advocacy and the targets of the advocacy.

Through an analysis of localising rights, culture and framing it is possible to see the outlines of a new kind of human rights practice in the United Kingdom – relating human rights to people's everyday lives, framing rights so that they resonate locally, and thereby building a culture of human rights. In the section which follows the debates set out above relating to localising human rights and implementing human rights are applied to the case study of YHRCN.

York Human Rights City Network (YHRCN)

York is a town of just over 200,000 people situated in the north of England. Its rich history includes both Roman and Viking influence. More recently, in the nineteenth century, York's economy was dominated by the railways and confectionary. In the era of neoliberalism, since the 1970s, it has become a service town, with a significant tourist industry and two universities (the University of York and York St. John University). York's modest size and relative economic prosperity when compared to larger, more industrial Northern town, has made it a desirable place to live and study. Such pressures have driven up prices and inequality in the city. Among those affected by these inequalities is the city's minority ethnic population, which was 11 per cent of the total population in 2009. This brief sketch illustrates the variety of historical forces that have shaped the city – and informed the work of YHRCN.

Like other human rights cities, York built on its own particular history when seeking to give the label local content. This is a key element of localising human rights in the concrete place and space of a city. Early on, research was undertaken into the history and culture of York, seeking to ensure ‘frame alignment’ with a positive narrative about the city.Footnote ⁹ This positive narrative included five key elements. First, democratic innovation, as in 2012, York celebrated 800 years since it was granted its Royal Charter by King John. This charter represented the start of local decision making in York, making the city a pioneer of democratic innovation in the United Kingdom. The York Fairness Commission is a more recent example of contemporary democratic innovation. Second, philanthropy, shaping local and national agendas, in that significant philanthropic activity has emerged from the city and its chocolate industry (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust). York has been a source of initiatives as diverse as model residential communities (New Earswick) and support for NGO advocacy for the Human Rights Act. Third, faith in the city, because faith groups have led much of the work on social justice and human rights in York. The city has a strong Quaker tradition and the Archbishop of York is the second most senior bishop in the Anglican Church. Fourth, internationalism, informed by tourism, the chocolate industry and its two universities. Fifth, a strong commitment to social justice cut across these other elements. A frequently cited local luminary is Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, born in York in 1871 into the Rowntree family, a Quaker family known for its cocoa and chocolate business, whose seminal studies of poverty in York demonstrated a causal link between poverty, low wages and insecurity of employment. His work had a significant impact on contemporary thought and politics, including the development of the welfare state after the Second World War.

A first exploratory meeting to discuss the human rights city concept was held in York on 11 October 2011. The timing was no coincidence – it was informed by the coming together of a particular group of people (see below), a national media and political environment increasingly hostile to human rights and driving a policy agenda dominated by austerity, and a local context which suggested possible alternatives (e.g. the City Council was led by the Labour Party and was broadly sympathetic). At the time of writing, the city had hosted a pilot human rights city project – funded by the York-based Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and Joseph Rowntree Foundation between 2012 and 2013 – and is now a year into a new three-year programme of activities supported by the same funders. The story of this campaign is the usual mix associated with more localised, community work. For every packed venue and glowing feedback sheet, there is also a face to face encounter with bemusement or hostility as well as memories of pacing outside empty halls on cold winters nights wondering if the audience will outnumber the speakers.

At an organisational level, two main features characterise the human rights city initiative. First, it has largely been driven by key individuals. A Steering Group has met regularly since October 2011, but its membership has been an open, or perhaps revolving, door. Those interested and committed to the idea could join.Footnote ¹⁰ Within this group the main drivers, or the human rights leaders, have been the (now retired) secretary of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, an organisation which funded much of the activity that supported the development of the Human Rights Act; the Director of the Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR) at the University of York, who was seeking a vehicle to complement the Centre's mainly international work with a local presence; two Chief Executives of International Service, a development agency which adopts a human rights-based approach to development and also has administered a human rights award; and two Network Coordinators, the first the son of one of the disappeared in Argentina, the second a British Sikh activist who had previously studied at the CAHR. This diverse group of personalities and interests, alongside attempts to understand the local context, shaped the YHRCN and the approach which is outlined below.

Second, the organisational form or constitution has evolved, and remained fluid. Central to the network's own governance has been the broader question of the city's governance – Which actors needed to be engaged with? What should be our relationship with the City Council? What was a York Human Rights City Project (YHRCP) for the most of the duration of the 2012–2013 pilot, became the York Human Rights City Network (YHRCN) at the end of 2013. At a Steering Group meeting on 23 October 2013, the need to formalise membership and organisation was expressed, ‘for reasons of transparency and accountability, but also because potential funders may want to be assured that proper governance arrangements are in place’ (Minutes, 23 October 2013). By March 2014, the Steering Group had drawn back from committing to a particular model,Footnote ¹¹ largely due to concerns about how big the ‘engine’ for the network (Steering Group or Executive) should be, and how to manage its democratic element, for example, What powers should an Annual General Meeting have? How can we ensure that certain voices or sectors do not dominate? As such the YHRCN remained ‘in transition’ (Minutes, 19 March 2014).

The appointment of a second Network Coordinator re-galvanised thinking on governance, which was discussed at length again at a Steering Group away day on 19 November 2014. On the basis of the away day discussions, a set of governance guidelines were agreed by the Steering Group on 19 December 2014. The guidelines established a Steering Group consisting of eleven people: the Chair, Network Coordinator and representatives from the following groups which will have permanent seats on the Steering Group – the Centre for Applied Human Rights, York CVS, International Service, and York City Council. A further five places are reserved for other individuals and organisations on a rotation basis (two year terms, with a maximum of two terms). The Chair and rotating members will be appointed by the Steering Group, through a yet to be determined application process. Beyond the Steering Group, individuals and organisations can become part of the network and there will be two meetings a year which are open to all members. Open meetings are presented as opportunities for debate about current issues, and for presenting the work of the network to a wider constituency.

Network discussions about organisational form and governance were underpinned by three important debates. First, the issue of how to relate to the City Council was resolved by providing it with a permanent set on the Steering Group. As such, a model of collaborative governance was adopted. Second, various proposals sought to balance leadership, in the form of an Executive or Steering Group of core actors, with democracy, and open meetings which would allow a broader range of actors in the city to hear more about the network and also shape its activities (Minutes, 23 October 2013; Minutes, 19 November 2013; Minutes, 6 September 2014; Minutes, 6 November 2014). The governance model adopted is more leadership-driven, and less democratic, than the model set aside in March 2014. A third area of debate pitted a vision of the network as a facilitator, coordinator and information hub, against an alternative vision which saw the network in a more activist role, taking on individual cases and engaging in advocacy. Within the current guidelines this debate is unresolved.

In the governance guidelines YHRCN also set out its vision, mission and objectives. It vision is for York as a ‘a vibrant, diverse, fair and safe city built on the foundations of universal human rights; and as a city that reaches out and links with the wider human rights community striving for similar outcomes at national, European and global levels’. This led the network to adopt the following mission: ‘We will engage with local people, communities and institutions to create a new kind of conversation about human rights and their potential to produce positive change, locally in York, nationally within the UK, and internationally at the European and global levels’.

The vision and mission translate into three objectives: to encourage practitioners and policy makers at a City level to use human rights law and principles to guide their work; to raise public awareness and generate debate about human rights issues through the arranging of public events;Footnote ¹² and to mobilise human rights to provide protection for vulnerable groups, both locally and as a form of international solidarity.Footnote ¹³

The approach of YHRCN, forged largely by network leaders, was in part a response to the already-mentioned hostile political and media environment for human rights in the United Kingdom. There was a feeling that the network needed to try to change the terms of the debate, to initiate a different kind of conversation about human rights. The core elements of the human rights framing were as follows. First, a bottom-up, more locally informed approach was adopted. For example, the network took as a point of reference the PANEL principles from a human rights-based approach to development (participation, accountability, non-discrimination, empowerment, and the law), as a process-based and localising understanding of human rights practice, as well as the Human Rights Act. Second, ensuring that human rights related to everyday concerns. Human rights should be important to communities because they relate to care for an individual's elderly parents or the quality of local education, as well as to violations in far-away places. Human rights is about the ordinary and on-going, and not just about spectacular events. Finally, presenting a more positive/balanced view of human rights. For example, the North Yorkshire Police have stated on many occasions that the Human Rights Act anchors their work and enables them to do their work more effectively. Therefore, human rights are not just about protecting unpopular groups and causes, such as the due process rights of terrorist suspects or the rights of prisoners to vote (although it is in part about protecting such groups). It provides protection and a means of problem solving for all.

The chosen approach speaks to, and fleshes out, the definition outlined above of a ‘culture of human rights’. The aim of the network was to create such a culture and to generate a counter-narrative to the prevailing one of threat and siege. Clearly diverse strategies would be needed, beyond classic human rights approaches of litigation and naming and shaming, but the key challenge was how to do this – the rhetoric sounds attractive, but how do you actually operationalise such an approach to human rights?

The main vehicle for delivering this approach has been a participatory local indicator project, which brings together YHRCN's approach to city governance and human rights practice. In doing so, it draws on the work of Participation and Practice of Rights (PPR) in Belfast (see Marshall, Ward and Browne Reference Marshall, Ward and Browne2014). PPR's methodology moves from the local to the global, identifying local concerns, based on lived experience, and then supporting people to translate these concerns into rights-based demands for change. Local concerns are mapped onto a relatively small number of indicators and benchmarks, which communities themselves can monitor. Finally, there is an attempt to move from top down, state-led participation to community driven ‘structured engagement’. This is based on the understanding that state-led opportunities for participation have significant limitations, and in particular routinely exclude the most marginalised from shaping public policy. Through structured engagement the community interacts with government agencies on its own terms, through the public launch of a campaign, annual reports on progress made against the indicators and benchmarks, etc. Conventional power relations are disrupted as communities identify their own priorities, set the indicators and benchmarks, that is, the types of change wanted and the speed of change sought, monitor progress themselves, and in the process build their capacity and seek to hold duty bearers to account. When resistance occurs, the anchoring of demands in national and international human rights adds legitimacy to local demands.Footnote ¹⁴

In York, identifying locally relevant rights seemed a good way of side-stepping hostility towards the Human Rights Act, and demonstrating wide-spread support for rights when separated from the polarised debate surrounding the Act. Early indicator proposals focused on the choice between a ‘wider’ and a ‘narrower model’. Drawing on rights enshrined in international law and highlighted as important in the York Fairness Commission report, the wider model identified ten possible rights (civil-political and socio-economic rights), while the narrower model focused more on socio-economic rights and non-discrimination and identified a smaller list of five rights. One advantage of socio-economic rights is the clear application of the norm of progressive realisation, allowing adaptation to context and the measurement of progress over time. A Steering Group meeting on 6 November 2014 fundamentally altered the approach to the indicator project. To this point, the approach had been essentially top down, distilling important rights from legal instruments and policy reports. Moving forward it was decided that a two-stage participatory approach would be employed, first to ask York citizens what five rights they felt were most important, and then to select indicators linked to these rights (moving from the local to the global).

A group of students based at CAHR conducted the research to identify the five priority rights ‘for York’. They carried out a survey on the streets of York and online and interviewed local NGOs working with disadvantaged minority groups. In total, 453 surveys were completed, and 6 NGOs were interviewed. The five rights selected from a non-exhaustive long list of rights were education, non-discrimination and equality, health, an adequate standard of living, and housing. Each secured over 200 ‘votes’ (Khachatryan et al. Reference Khachatryan, Leonard, Vukovic and Sasaki2015).Footnote ¹⁵ The second phase of participatory engagement consisted of five focus groups, one on each priority right, with relevant local civil society actors led by the Network Coordinator in May 2015. The focus groups were designed to start the process of identifying specific indicators linked to the five rights. Throughout, the emerging consensus about priority rights and associated indicators have been cross-checked with actors with a detailed knowledge of the city, such as the City Council and York CVS.

At the end of 2014 YHRCN secured a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council Impact Accelerator Account which sought to embed the indicators developed in the culture, practice and policies of three members of the network: the City Council, York CVS and North Yorkshire Police. The funding was for staff secondments and the development and delivery of training at each of the three partner agencies. This programme of work will be rolled out during 2015. In the future YHRCN has plans to expand the list of five rights and associated indicators in York, and to introduce the model of participatory indicator development to other cities.

It is too early to evaluate the attempt to use participatory indicators to develop a bottom-up culture of rights. However, certain initial observations can be made. The project could be seen as an attempt by local human rights leaders to advocate to both a city-based community and the UK human rights establishment a particular approach to human rights (participatory, locally informed, related to everyday concerns) with implications for city governance (‘structured engagement’ here involves working in partnership with the City Council to embed the indicators in its work). As such, processes of norm emergence, socialisation, frame alignment and frame transformation are taking place. It is important to also acknowledge the challenges faced. During the indicator research there were again discussions within the Steering Group about balancing leadership and democracy, with an agreement that the group would ‘retain some sort of final say to ensure we are focusing on rights with which progress can be made locally’ (Minutes, 6 November 2014). For example, little could be done in York if torture were identified as a priority right. In the end the Steering Group were happy to endorse the five rights selected though the survey. But this indicates that this project will continue to come up against familiar hurdles facing participatory approaches, both in its governance and its practice – how much participation is enough? Who is, and who should be, participating? What happens when participation produces results that leaders do not like?Footnote ¹⁶

This section concludes by examining three more general challenges facing YHRCN. The first challenge is how to reach beyond the converted. The audience at events is often made up of familiar faces; given prevailing multi-actor governance frameworks, the network needs to do more to reach out to business and the private sector. Human rights has at times acted as a language through which to build bridges and solidarity, and a means to ‘fashion a shared understanding of the world’, for example, among an ‘unusual coalition’ of organisations which took part in a Human Rights and Social Justice Fair in April 2013. With regard to holding events, one key lesson learned is that the network needs to use innovative, accessible venues to attract new audiences. In this regard, the film festival in June 2013 on the theme Why Poverty? was very successful, using diverse venues for documentaries and short films (from York Minster Crypt to pubs and clubs). More recent film festivals reproduced this approach. A ‘culture of human rights’ requires broad-based support for human rights, from diverse constituencies – how can this be achieved?

A second challenge is how to relate human rights to the local and everyday, but still maintain some leverage for progressive change. A related dilemma pits pragmatism against principle, frame alignment against frame transformation. If ‘translation’ of human rights to the local and existing mores is too effective, too complete, human rights loses its edge and simply becomes a way of supporting the status quo. Another important issue for the future is how and when to tackle unpopular issues and working with unpopular constituencies. An obvious constituency for the network to work with in York is the traveller community, who have three sites in York. Yet the Steering Group were advised by some community members early on not to start by working on such a divisive issue. Moving forward, can the initiative balance doing what is important and right with nurturing support for an emerging network?

Finally, the question remains as to what a human rights city really is, and when it is appropriate to embrace the label. Despite good relations with the City Council in the network's early years, the network did not push for York to declare itself a human rights city. In part, this was because to do so would be to repeat the top-down logic of much human rights work, albeit at a local scale. YHRCN has been driven by an elite group of actors – there is as yet no mass movement or ‘culture of human rights’ backing the initiative. These are outcomes to be worked for and championed, not preconditions to be ignored. As such, formal recognition seems premature, not to say presumptuous (see Neubeck in this volume). Caution was also exercised due to some hostile public reactions to City Council support for the City of Sanctuary campaign (asylum seekers and refugees) in October 2011. When will it be right to push for human rights city status, and what balance of leadership and participation/ownership is acceptable in making this decision?

Conclusion

This chapter starts by setting out the context for the emergence of human rights cities, in order to address the question of why and how cities are driving new forms of human rights practice. The first element is the shift from state-based government to multi-actor governance. It is within this setting of emerging governance frameworks that cities and local authorities have to assert their power. At once ‘hollowed out’ and empowered, this chapter argues that cities retain some power to ‘bark back’ at national and international developments. Second, challenges facing human rights practice and implementation – localising an international framework, addressing cultural difference and building rights as culture, and framing rights to reach desired audiences – play out in particular ways in cities. Put another way, cities provide particularly compelling ‘sites and stakes’ for multi-actor, multi-strategy activism, where issues such as austerity and hate crime become a reality in local settings. These contextual observations are then applied to the case study of YHRCN, through an exploration of its evolving organisational forms and approaches or strategies.

York is the site of a human rights city campaign because of a particular confluence of history, politics and people, and the fact that this confluence set it against dominant trends in national political and human rights discourse. There was nothing inevitable about the trajectory. Leadership was required at the outset, participation followed, it is hoped that ownership will come with time. While many of the dilemmas facing this campaign are very familiar to human rights practice – should advocacy be narrowly or more broadly framed; how to balance leadership and participation, principles and pragmatism, etc. – the approach to human rights practice adopted is less so. The focus on participation or ‘structured engagement’, everyday concerns, positive and enabling perspectives and socio-economic rights speaks to the need to recalibrate human rights in the current context of globalisation and governance to make them fit for purpose. Cities can be perfect settings in which to undertake this task.

Postscript

In May 2015 UK elections the Conservative Party won a majority in the national parliament, and their manifesto included a pledge to replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights. At local authority level in York, a Labour Party-led administration was replaced by a Conservative-Liberal Democratic Coalition. Facing the future, YHRCN's work is both more urgent and more difficult.

Introduction

Eleanor Roosevelt's famous plea to consider human rights locally and individually is often quoted in speeches on human rights at the local level, but even more often ignored when it comes to practice, as human rights are understood to be a matter of international law and national obligation rather than of local implementation. Many view the subject as a technical legal issue concerning the sovereignty of the nation state, properly addressed to the national government. The ‘rise of human rights cities’ in its manifold aspects denotes the moment when human rights come back to the local level where they matter most.

The process of recognising the relevance of human rights at local level was initially driven by civil society actors and some progressive municipalities in the 1980s in different regions around the globe. During that time, a shift from viewing the city as essentially a social organisation to a rights-based perspective took place (Oomen in this volume). A decade later, UN-Habitat and UNESCO began to focus more attention on human rights implementation at local level. While Habitat focused on urban development, UNESCO directed action to education, and gender and race equality. Finally, the first decade of the twenty-first century brought wide official recognition among international and regional governmental organisations that local authorities play a major role in human rights implementation in practice, and that they have a legal obligation to do so.

From the European perspective, the role of the Council of Europe was a very important one in this transition, with its locally focused efforts to establish voting rights of foreigners and to promote gender equality.Footnote ¹ In a series of conventions and resolutions, the Council of Europe's Congress of Local and Regional Authorities developed the first international body of law directly addressed to local authorities.Footnote ² Further, in order to achieve a culture of human rights at local level, a forum for exchange of practical information on how to implement human rights effectively was held the first time in Graz in May 2015, as foreseen by the Congress Resolution 334.Footnote ³ The Congress resolution and the Graz declaration that emerged from the 2015 forum urge local authorities to train politicians and civil servants and encourage them to mainstream human rights through their service delivery systems. In order to assess the efficiency of respective policies, the Congress provides a system of human rights indicators (Starl et al. Reference Starl, Lappalainen, Stocker, Apostolovski and Möstl2013–2015: 10). Remarkably, the document extends the Vienna agreement that all human rights obligations encompass the respect, protection and fulfilment of human rights by adding a fourth duty to promote human rights.Footnote ⁴

Building on the Council of Europe's work, the European Union's Committee of the Regions (CoR) passed the Charter for Multilevel Governance in Europe in 2014 aiming at ‘ensuring maximum fundamental rights protection’ at all governance levels.Footnote ⁵ Thus, in Europe at least, the missing links between the international, national and local levels in human rights guarantees are filled in, and there is clarity that human rights are legally binding obligations at all levels. To what extent this is followed in practice, an OHCHR study currently underway will show.Footnote ⁶

Though Europe has taken a lead, progress can be observed at the global level as well. For example, the UN Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) includes the local and regional perspective on human rights protection and delivery in the overall reporting scheme. This format, which must be followed by all UN members as they go through the UPR process, has focused national attention on the relevance of the local human rights dimension. In addition, as the United Nations negotiates the post-millennium agenda, it has addressed one of the Sustainable Development Goals (Goal 11) to the local level: ‘Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’.Footnote ⁷

During the last two decades, civil society and, increasingly, committed municipalities and regions were among those going beyond basic international obligations to set minimum standards for rights implementation and realisation (Papisca Reference Papisca, De Feyter, Parmentier, Timmerman and Ulrich2011: 94). These actors, including the governmental and non-governmental sector, networks and platforms, multi-stakeholder partnerships, and individual cities, developed a wide range of forums, charters, declarations and good practices aiming at compliance with, and promotion of, human rights. Putting aside the obstacles and occasional backsliding, this is a promising path of development. And increasingly, these horizontal human rights efforts at the civil society and local government level are converging with the vertical, multi-level-governance efforts initiated by international and regional governmental organisations. This process is expected to trigger important synergies in local human rights fulfilment and promotion.

This chapter aims to demonstrate that the ‘human rights city’ makes a difference for politicians, municipal authorities, and local citizens. The chapter develops the case for explicit respect for human rights at the local level on the basis of particularly, but not only, the Austrian experience. The chapter begins by establishing that the local level is obliged to comply with human rights standards, both formally and substantively. Even though this notion is not always agreed upon by local policy makers, the spirit behind the concept of human rights, as well as the above-mentioned vertical developments bringing human rights to the local level corroborate the statement.

Next, the central part of the chapter discusses a ‘productive tension’ between obligations and commitments. Human rights commitments are not necessarily government driven. They may be – and often are – civil society-initiated or implemented. Following from this discussion, an empirically derived definition of human rights cities will be proposed. This section should provide some important elements for theorising human rights cities when defining the distinct markers for a human rights city and typologising the models of implementation. Two case studies from Austria, both involving freedom of expression, will demonstrate the interrelation between legal obligations and political commitments.

The final section of this chapter draws on empirical evidence to elaborate on the opportunities that result from promoting the governance framework of human rights commitments. Municipal policies are formulated in a context in which local government is a democratic institution, a rule-maker, an employer, a service provider, and a public to private contractor. In all of these capacities, a city can employ and implement human rights-based – or at least -oriented – policies. This section will demonstrate that a human rights commitment is not only ‘nice’ but also politically and economically rational.

Legal obligations and political commitments at local level

Nation states are the primary addressees of human rights obligations, because of the very technical fact that states are the parties to human rights treaties, and states generally have the power to implement international treaties with their subordinated authorities within their jurisdiction. However, human rights are, first of all, rights of individuals against public authorities, no matter at what level. Human rights, the most essential rights to be claimed, are as relevant in cities as they are at the national level. Indeed, human rights may be even more pertinent at the local level due to the close relationship between authorities and the everyday life of the people (Accardo, Grimheden and Starl Reference Accardo, Grimheden, Starl, Benedek, Benoît-Rohmer, Karl and Nowak2012; De Feyter Reference De Feyter, De Feyter, Parmentier, Timmerman and Ulrich2011: 1). Grounding this relationship in universal values, Papisca (Reference Papisca, De Feyter, Parmentier, Timmerman and Ulrich2011: 84) argues that the city's human rights obligation derives from the right to a protective social order enshrined in article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

Cities are certainly taking on more responsibilities in this realm. Morten Kjaerum, the former Director of the Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union, described the process of human rights development from post-WWII through the post-Cold-war as ‘an on-going shaping from a landscape to an architecture where the local level is getting ever more and particular relevance’.Footnote ⁸ This shift is not surprising, since human rights threats have local origins and ‘human rights claims originate from local sites’ (Council of Europe 2015; De Feyter Reference De Feyter, De Feyter, Parmentier, Timmerman and Ulrich2011: 14). Also not surprising is the fact that, with increased scrutiny of cities’ human rights records, an enforcement gap between human rights norms and local realities has been identified repeatedly (Hafner-Burton Reference Hafner-Burton2013; Marx et al. Reference Marx, Hachez, Meuwissen, Schmitt, Jaraczewski, Lewis, Raube, Roszak, Starl, Morondo Taramundi, Tuovinen and Weatherburn2015). The human rights cities movement marks the next phase in local efforts to acknowledge and address these gaps. The political commitment to promote the fulfilment of human rights and to create a culture of human rights in cities is certainly going beyond the respect for minimum standards. Such a commitment marks the various human rights cities initiatives.

Three types of human rights cities may be distinguished: the stand-alone model; the vertically organised multi-level governance model; and the horizontally organised networking model. In the first category, a city literally localises human rights on its own. In the second, a local government coherently cooperates with all governance levels up to the international level in human rights implementation. The third category is based on the promising development of inter-governmental initiatives.

What distinguishes a human rights city from a city that is simply observing human rights standards – what constitutes a ‘human rights city’? Several elements are relevant: Is there a formal commitment to human rights? Is there a transparent process implementing human rights according to the commitment? Are structures established that guarantee sustainability over electoral and fiscal cycles? Does it make a difference for the people concerned – in other words: is the implementation of the commitment effective?

As a matter of definition, I propose that a city is a human rights city if its governing bodies explicitly decide to shape and actually implement its policies towards maximum achievable human rights fulfilment in any way that a culture of human rights within the municipality and within the society as a whole evolves and becomes a reality in the perception and in the living conditions of its citizens. A city does this by establishing structures and processes accordingly, as well as evaluating the policies’ outcomes.

This definition requires a formal decision and declaration which expresses the municipality's self-commitment. Besides the principle of rule of law, this is necessary as a declaration of political action by political parties, authorities, and importantly by civil society. It builds the basis for accountability (see also Davis in this volume). A formal commitment makes a difference to other municipalities, which probably comply with human rights standards but do not declare human rights implementation as a core task. This means that all structures, decision-making processes, policy implementation, and institutions are oriented towards the fulfilment of human rights. The case studies that follow will show that a formal commitment served as a basis for the institutionalisation of appropriate measures in the first case and that the lack of such commitment would have led to different results in the second case.

A commitment towards the maximum achievable standards is required to distinguish a human rights city from a human rights respecting city. Finally, the focus needs to be put on factual achievement aimed at creating an atmosphere of mutual respect for dignity, freedom, equality and – more contested – solidarity within the society. Serious intention is indicated by the commitment to evaluate the results.

Two case studies on the freedom of expression from cities in Austria

Two Austrian case studies provide a basis for further elaboration of the relationship between international, constitutional and national human rights obligations and political human rights commitments at the city level. The first study involves the city of Graz's attempts to address political hate speech. The second study deals with the city and the region of Salzburg and its general ban on begging in public space.

Both cases deal with the freedom of speech, guaranteed by article 10 of the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights, ECHR 1950). While the first case is about an effort to restrict the freedom of speech through a local intervention, the second illustrates the guarantee of the full enjoyment of such freedom. Both cases involve immigrants, in one as objects and in the other as subjects. However, the fact that immigrants were concerned is not essential for the cases, as recognised by the courts that rendered judgment in each case. The cases were dealt with as substantive human rights cases and thus, the outcome has general applicability beyond the individual discrimination cases involving immigrants.

Both examples were initially civil society driven, taken up by receptive politicians, and finally institutionalised by the local government. They led to policy change, as well as to co-operation between the two cities, Graz and Salzburg, in the field of human rights protection and promotion. These policies triggered a change of perception and climate in the general public, brought greater human rights awareness among the population and, partly, fundamental rethinking by the media. A societal culture of human rights was at least promoted.

Supporting these outcomes was the Austrian legal framework, which is favourable to human rights implementation at the local level. International human rights norms are constitutional law to a large extent. The constitutional hierarchy obliges all governance levels to implement human rights norms according to their respective competences. Furthermore, municipalities and regions are independent legal entities and accountable for human rights compliance.

Conclusions

Human rights are intrinsically related to the local level from a political point of view. This notion served as starting point for this chapter. With this in mind, this chapter argued that local governments are equally accountable for human rights as are national governments. International organisations have recently confirmed human rights obligations of local and regional authorities. Even though these international bodies – with a few exceptions – cannot address local governments directly, the vertical multi-level-governance architecture is important for the local actors’ feeling of being responsible.

Some have asked whether the compliance with legal obligations alone makes a city a ‘human rights city’. But being a human rights city requires a deeper commitment. A human rights city has been defined as a city that explicitly agrees to acknowledge the human rights fulfilment of its citizens as its core task. These guarantees are fulfilled by mainstreaming human rights in all decision-making procedures and by applying the proportionality mechanism in all conflicts of rights and interests. The human rights-based approach certainly includes all efforts to ensure and promote equality in order to make an abstract right a reality for all. The concept of human rights cities further encompasses two strands. The one is the respect for human rights by the municipal authorities, and the fulfilment of their positive duties. The other is to promote a culture of human rights within the society, which perhaps distinguishes the human rights approach at local level from the national states’ approach.

The difference between mere compliance with obligations and more far reaching commitments to the promotion of human rights has been demonstrated with two case studies from Austria, where the formal legal setting is favourable to human rights at the municipal level. The cases deal with the freedom of speech and the re-balancing of conflicting rights. They also show that a local commitment to social rights going beyond the national binding law leads to implications for municipal policy makers. In Salzburg a restrictive law against begging had been ruled unconstitutional and qualified as a breach of the right to free speech. Based on a local commitment to human rights promotion, the government sought the solution in an improvement of welfare services. In the case of Graz, the government sought to resolve a local human rights issue, namely the consequences of political hate speech, by a specific monitoring measure. After having been confirmed by a court decision, the government institutionalised the monitoring instrument including sanctions against offenders. In both cases the cities’ human rights commitment was the actual driver for change.

Both cases have in common that the local governments involved felt committed to horizontally organised human rights city networks, a fact that seems to have an important impact on decision taking.

Vertical and horizontal initiatives for guaranteeing human rights at the city level are merging. It can be expected that this will bring about synergies in the creation of human rights awareness, the extent of responsibilities, and finally, in the impact on the factual human rights enjoyment of people.

Practical experience impressively demonstrates important benefits from a city's active engagement in promoting human rights. Human rights protections prevent poverty and socio-economic inequality and thus, contribute to social peace and cohesion. Human rights-based policies positively influence the quality of life and thus, contribute to a positive connectivity between human rights and economic wealth. Human rights guarantees increase political credibility and reputation and thus, contribute to a high degree of identification with the place of residence.

In the absence of a theory of human rights cities, it is difficult to establish an order of importance of the key factors for ensuring sustainability. However, the mutual corroboration of local civil society and engaged politicians creates awareness and shared values. This coincidence of actors together with international recognition and reputation is likely to lead to institutionalisation and the availability of capacities and resources. A formal commitment enshrining shared values, establishing institutions and describing implementation processes finally gives the whole bundle of elements an overall frame and provides an important instrument to support all actors. These factors together can result in achievements for city dwellers.

I close with Oomen and Verbeek's concluding remarks at the Human Rights at the Local Level Forum in Graz. Acknowledging the risk that human rights measures may be treated as ‘feel-good’ standards with little practical impact, they called for local commitment to meaningful human rights implementation, where ‘the ‘hobby’ of the few becomes the responsibility of the many!’Footnote ²²

Introduction

The right to the city is not a new claim in Latin American countries generally and in Mexico specifically. The Mexico City Charter followed other efforts such as the City Statute of Brazil in 2001 that recognised the right to the city as a collective right (Fernandes Reference Fernandes2007). Yet the process of constructing the right to the city alludes to a particular context and its social space. The social space in the city is constituted by the physical space and the social interactions (Purcell Reference Purcell2008) in which urban and still rural areas are joined. Mexico City, like many urban spaces, is limited by the physical space of its boundaries and the social and the political forces that fight for the space (Lefebvre Reference Lefebvre1991: 26–168). Just like the other cases discussed in this book – such as Eugene, Oregon; Montréal, Canada; and Maamobi, Ghana – the right to the city in Mexico is accompanied by its own process that reflects its unique history and context. It is this social space in which the right to the city is claimed as a social product (Lefebvre Reference Lefebvre1991: 26).

This chapter explores the right to the city by looking at the process of developing the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City adopted by the government of Mexico City in 2010 (Balboa Reference Balboa2010). It does so by exploring the contentions and complexities of negotiating the space of the city and the importance of having a charter to formalise the right to the city. This chapter contributes to this section by explaining the process to recognise this right while projecting and fundamentally working towards its implementation. In the end, the Charter was the result of a consensus that integrated the claims of a coalition of social and grassroots organisations and the local government. The implementation of the Charter, however, remains a big challenge for its promoters.

The Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City is an example of ‘a dynamic of process and conquest, in which social movements are the engine, driving the achievement of this right’ (Mathivet Reference Mathivet, Sugranyes and Mathivet2010: 24). The development of the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City was a unique experience that achieved the recognition of the right and facilitated other processes across the city. The Charter of Mexico City was the first document to address the right to the city and be recognised by federal and local government officials. Other cities have followed the Charter and started their own efforts to develop their own, more specific charters through a consultation process (Ramírez Zaragoza Reference Ramírez Zaragoza2013).

This chapter is organised in the following way. The first section defines the right to the city and discusses its dimensions, highlighting effective and extensive participation as fundamental for its promotion and further adoption by the government. The second section introduces Mexico City as a case study providing a general background of its geography and political, social and economic context with respect to the country. The third section explores the process of developing the Charter for the Right to the City by conducting a historical review and giving an account of the different steps established to promote the Charter. The section briefly discusses the history of the organisations involved in the making of the Charter and how they participated in the process. The fourth section addresses the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City and analyses its contents as an instrument for policy making taking into account participatory mechanisms to implement it. The fifth section explores opportunities and challenges related to the implementation of the Charter and the right to the city in Mexico City. The last part draws some general conclusions.

The right to the city

The right to the city is a complex concept. It is a right that integrates all rights in the city (Mathivet Reference Mathivet, Sugranyes and Mathivet2010: 24) by addressing the human rights principle of interdependence and conceiving that rights are intertwined; it focuses on rights as a collective – not as an individual matter for specific groups, but as rights for all in a unified way (Ortíz Flores Reference Ortíz Flores2013: 10). Additionally, the right is addressed in the World Charter of the Right to the City. Promoted by social movements in the World Social Forum 2001 in Brazil,Footnote ¹ this document is a starting point for later discussions on the right to the city. The right in the World Charter is defined as a right that facilitates a network of social relations; implies the right to social cohesion and the collective construction of the city; and incorporates the right to live with dignity in the city, the right to co-existence, the right to influence and access the municipal government, and the right to equal rights (Mathivet Reference Mathivet, Sugranyes and Mathivet2010: 25). The right to the city reclaims the space by addressing the longstanding social demands – such as the right to adequate housing, the right to work, and the right to an adequate standard of living – while it addresses new and evolving issues in a city of constant change.

The goal of the right to the city is to achieve a more just and equitable city, and the struggle to negotiate different demands makes that a difficult challenge. The right to the use of the city is defined as the right to appropriate it, but this right is exercised through the right to participation (Purcell Reference Purcell2002). The right to the city is the appropriation of the city, and the groups that advocate for it redefine and shape it according to their needs. The right to the city means a change in the social, economic and political landscape of the city, change that happens through a process of negotiation and political struggle that requires the empowerment of the city's inhabitants (Purcell Reference Purcell2002). In this sense the right to the city is effectively exercised through democratic participation. One of the fundamental axes of the right is defined in the World Charter as ‘the democratic management of the city through the direct participation of society in planning and governance, thus strengthening local governments and social organisation’.Footnote ²

There are three political implications of participation exercised to appropriate the city (Marcuse Reference Marcuse, Sugranyes and Mathivet2010: 90–91). The first political implication is that it brings together different groups fighting for different rights which propel social mobilisation. The second political implication is that a unitary view of the right to the city implies an understanding of the political system as a whole. A group that campaigns knows that their struggle affects the results of other struggles; there is an understanding of the political system that helps to see solutions as far-reaching and not partial solutions that benefit some groups to the detriment of others. The third political implication allows for inclusive solutions, based on a common view of the city. The right to the city in Mexico City is analysed by looking at these political implications: (1) the integration of a committee to promote the right that joined forces despite their differences (the committee); (2) the process of promoting the right and adding the demands for the Charter and (3) the content of a charter that brought the consensus of the city that was dreamed of. In sum, this chapter provides an understanding of a process involving the participation of several stakeholders with conflicting interests in the Mexican context.

Making of the Charter

In this context, the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City was first proposed by the Popular Urban Movement (PUM) (El Movimiento Urbano Popular (MUP)) and Habitat International Coalition – Latin America (HIC-AL) promoting it at the local level, initially through the participation of the administration of Mexico City in areas concerning urban planning and others that were created to defend the socio-economic rights of people living in Mexico (Ramírez Zaragoza Reference Ramírez Zaragoza2013: 125). HIC-AL had been working to promote the right to city in Latin America, and in Mexico their efforts to promote it intensified after 2008Footnote ⁸. As part of this effort, these two very different organisational entities (but with similar interests), had worked together for the creation of the Charter for the Right to the City. Other organisations that were involved are the coalition of civil society organisations for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Espacio DESC).Footnote ⁹

The Popular Urban Movement (PUM) has a different way of organising than the civil society organisations participating in the process. Their struggle may be identified with the mission statement of Equipo Pueblo and even HIC-AL, but their presence in the urban setting and active participation in communities goes back to the late 1960s. The movement led by community leaders has the support of the communities that constitute it. The PUM was founded in the late 1960s and, influenced by Marxism, is distinct from other urban movements created and supported by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (IRP) (Partido Revolucionario Institutional (PRI)).Footnote ¹⁰ They constitute an autonomous movement that mistrusts the government to negotiate. The PUM includes many left-wing political streams and their organisation is different from the typical nongovernmental organisation. These movements coalesce around a particular claim and they organise opportunisticly, based on their own demands. The PUM spreads out through the whole Mexican territory with claims that vary depending on the territory in which they are located. However, most of these claims converge around housing, and their mode of operation is distinct from other movements such as unions and rural movements. The PUM relies on its communities to organise and they mobilise against inequality and lack of opportunities in the city. The PUM claims the city as its space of struggle (Ramírez Saiz Reference Ramírez Saiz1986). The PUM is fundamentally a movement that vindicates urban claims and the city is its members’ battle zone.

HIC-AL is a very important actor – if not the one that has guided the process – giving content to the right to the city by participating in the negotiation process and sometimes being an intermediary between the social movements and the local authorities. HIC-AL is an international organisation with its headquarters in Mexico City. It has participated in different forums such as the World Urban Forums, where the right to the city has been extensively discussed. It participates in the Global Platform for the Right to the City, a platform integrated by HIC-AL and other organisations to build an international movement for the right to the city.Footnote ¹¹ HIC-AL is continuously advocating for the right to the city to promote a just city that contemplates in its urban planning everyone that lives in it.

The process to realise the Mexico City Right to the City Charter included the social struggle to recognise it as a collective right (Ortíz Flores Reference Ortíz Flores2013). The right to the city was a legitimate claim for groups fighting for different issues – for example, negotiating affordable housing and/or more political representation. The right was conceived of as a sum of other rights at the same time that it was identified as a right that suited collective needs more so than being a nominal category of all human rights. The recognition of the right implied a process of institutionalisation, establishing a public commitment to start up a participatory process to include the three statutory powers of the city. The process of developing the Charter began in 2008 and was first acknowledged by the DRP's administration, under the leadership of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón.Footnote ¹² The Charter was drafted and promoted by a pluralistic and representative committee which was integrated by grassroots organisations, civil society organisations; the Human Rights Commission of Mexico City and the three statutory powers of Mexico City (Carta de la Ciudad de México por el Derecho a la Ciudad 2010). The interior ministry of Mexico City was part of this committee as well. The project strategised to promote the right as a collective claim to vindicate all the rights of the people in the city (Ortíz Flores Reference Ortíz Flores2013). The committeeFootnote ¹³ was presented to the public with the task of completing a draft that defined the right to the city in Mexico, which meant that this Charter was then going to be considered as part of the political agenda of the local government (Zárate Reference Zárate2011). The Charter’ drafting process took two years up to its signing at a public event that was organised in the Teatro de la Ciudad (Balboa Reference Balboa2010).

The process of developing the Charter itself occurred in three stages. The first stage was a consulting phase that included organising different events and promoting the right to the city. The committee reported that it consulted more than 5,000 people who participated in one of the many events organised to gather data for the Charter. The Committee participated and organised the Social Forum in January 2008 in Mexico City and the Human Rights Fair that took place in December 2009. At the Human Rights Fair, a series of activities were organised to promote and educate the public about the right to the city. There was also a series of events planned to consult the general public and organisations on the right to the city. At the same time, the Charter discussions were happening when the Human Rights Assessment and Program documents were drafted. The Assessment and the Human Rights Program's consultation and drafting process began in May 2008 and included the participation of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Mexico.Footnote ¹⁴ The OHCHR provided technical assistance throughout the whole making of the Human Rights Assessment and Program. The contents of both the Charter and the Human Rights Program for Mexico City were reviewed by the committee of the right to the city as well as the committee of the Human Rights Program to align their contents (Zárate Reference Zárate2011).

The second stage occurred after the draft was completed and ready to sign. The committee advocated for a public event to sign the Charter and then began promoting the Charter for other organisations, the general public and other governmental agencies. The mayor of Mexico City, Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón, signed the Charter on 20 July 2010, in front of a sizable and supportive crowd of people coming from the PUM and its different constituencies. However, the mayor's signature was an expression of public commitment to the Charter but without requiring local government action. The Charter is not a binding document and therefore is not enforceable. The purpose was to publicise the Charter and to have other stakeholders join. To date, unions, youth, professional and community-based organisations have signed the Charter (Carta de la Ciudad de México por el Derecho a la Ciudad 2010). After the Charter was signed, the committee gathered to draft a strategic plan to promote it and to make it real for people living in and transiting to Mexico City. The Charter became a motto for organisations that were looking to advocate for political reform of Mexico City and at the same time it became a tool to fight for new policies. Some legislators and policy makers have considered the Charter in their planning and the Charter has become a reference for other organisations.

The third, on-going stage of the Charter's development is its continuous promotion and, with the change of the mayor, the process of sensitising the new administration. The committee remains active, in particular the PUM and HIC-AL, which are still advocating and have pushed the signing of charters in each political district. For example, the Iztacalco Charter for the Right to the City was signed by the local authorities in February 2011 (Ramírez Zaragoza Reference Ramírez Zaragoza2013: 249).

Overall, the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City resulted from more than two years of work amongst civil society organisations and public entities. The making of the Right to the City Charter was a participatory process that included the voices of different stakeholders. The private sector became involved later in the process, as the committee realised that it was important to discuss the Charter with a wider audience before adopting it. The process was defined as inclusive and a main objective was to have a broad consultation process. For that purpose, the formation of a multi-stakeholder committee that included the city government, civil society organisations and the human right commission of Mexico City was fundamental. The long-term participatory process included the organisation of about thirty public forums to include as many other voices as possible (Zárate Reference Zárate2011). Lastly, the Charter was first drafted by integrating an approach complementing other similar participatory processes such as the Human Rights Program for the city that was being carried out at the same time also including some of the actors such as the Human Rights Commission of Mexico City.

The content of the Charter

The Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City should be examined in a larger global context including the debates of the right to the city since the late 1980s. The right to the city in Mexico is informed by the world social forums as well as by what is happening in other cities in the rest of Latin America (Zárate Reference Zárate, Moksnes and Melin2014). The State of the World's Cities report defines the Right to the City as ‘a dynamic and pragmatic combination of the multiple human rights to which urban dwellers are entitled, and they want fulfilled’ (UN-Habitat 2010: 57). In the report, UN-Habitat incorporated the right to the city as a framework to address city problems comprehensively. The right to the city has implications that are important to analyse, and that imply different solutions to address the concerns highlighted by the World Charter for the Right to the City (2005).Footnote ¹⁵

The Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City is based on the World Charter but it defines the right to the city with emphasis on collective rights (Zárate Reference Zárate2011). The Mexico City Charter defines the right to the city as the equal beneficial interest in cities following the principles of sustainability, democracy and social justice (Carta de la Ciudad de México por el Derecho a la Ciudad 2010: 15). The Charter's objectives are: (1) to contribute to a more equitable city; (2) to incentivise a participatory process that contributes to strengthening social capital; and (3) to include the most disadvantageous groups in the economic development of the city. It includes short-term and long-term strategies in six strategic foundations: (1) full exercise of human rights in the city; (2) the social function of the city, of land and of property; (3) democratic management of the city; (4) democratic production of the city and in the city; (5) sustainable and responsible management of the commons (natural, public heritage and energetic resources) of the city and its surroundings; and (6) democratic and equitable enjoyment of the city (see Table 1).

The first strategic dimension recognised in the Charter addresses the city as a city that embraces the recognition and protection of human rights. The second refers to an equitable distribution of services and use of the space where everyone has the right to equally enjoy and benefit from the city. The third strategic dimension focuses on the importance of participation in the decision-making process from the policy design to evaluation. The fourth strategic foundation broadens the notion of economic development and recognises the contribution, in particular, of the most marginalised sectors. This strategy implies the redesign of an economy that includes other mechanisms to increase productivity and that benefits all the sectors. The fifth strategy addresses the urgent need to focus on the environment. This strategy refers to the environmental conditions that allow people to leave the environment in better condition, conserving and caring for public spaces. It also addresses the space as urban, but as well as rural, in the city. Rural and conservation land adjoin the urban territory. For example, the Milpa Alta district has rural areas that are still used for farming. Finally, the sixth strategy emphasises the need to promote cultural life, recognising the city's social and cultural diversity.

To realise these foundations, the city has to be democratic, inclusive, sustainable, productive, educational, secure and safe, healthy, and culturally diverse, and with strong social relations (Carta de la Ciudad de México por el Derecho a la Ciudad 2010). These aspirational principles intersect with the six strategic foundations (see Table 1). The first strategic foundation that refers to the full exercise of human rights in the city intersects with a city that is democratic, inclusive, sustainable, productive, formative and secure and includes participation as a principle to achieve the goals stated. Table 1 shows that there are three types of actions: strategic, necessary and complementary. Each strategic foundation in the Charter defines and describes the type of action that is required. For example, in the intersection of the sixth strategic foundation and to achieve a city that is culturally and socially diverse the city needs to take action to create the areas in order to promote social and political action (Carta de la Ciudad de México por el Derecho a la Ciudad 2010: 56). Another action contributing to an inclusive city is the establishment of legal mechanisms to promote fair competition to benefit local and independent business (Carta de la Ciudad de México por el Derecho a la Ciudad 2010: 34).

The Charter provides recommendations as well as solutions pointing out the responsibilities of each stakeholder, addressing the need to reorient and direct policies for the full realisation of the right to the city. It takes account of the stakeholders that are obliged to act upon the realisation of the right, and is explicit about the state's obligations. For instance, the sixteen districts are included as key actors in achieving the right to the city and social and grassroots organisations are identified as important in overseeing them (Carta de la Ciudad de México por el Derecho a la Ciudad 2010: 62, 64). The Charter has been defined as a compass to help local government reorient their administration to be more equitable, democratic and just (Ortíz Flores Reference Ortíz Flores2013).

The right to the city in practice: opportunities and challenges

Signing the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City was a great achievement but for the committee the process has just started. The Charter is at risk of becoming a document that is first to be promoted and last to be implemented. For the committee the goal is to recognise the Charter and the right to the city in the law and make it enforceable. The dangers associated with implementing the Charter are related to the obstacles that have already been observed in other countries, such as Brazil (Maricato Reference Maricato, Marcuse, Novy, Olivo, Potter and Steil2009). In the Brazilian case, the City StatuteFootnote ¹⁶ recognises the social function of property and it is enforceable, but there are groups that impede its implementation (Maricato Reference Maricato, Marcuse, Novy, Olivo, Potter and Steil2009). Alternatively, if the right to the city is implemented, it needs to be addressed comprehensively and used to push forward far-reaching policies (Purcell Reference Purcell2008). Even though in the Mexican case the right to the city is not yet enforceable by law, the Charter is an explicit commitment that was announced in public. As yet, it risks turning out to be just a discourse used by the political groups adopting the right to the city rhetoric, but acting otherwise. A second risk is the lack of transparency from the government, such as neglecting to inform and appropriately provide for participatory actions that include the community. Notwithstanding that the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City resulted from a participatory process that reconciled different views (Zárate Reference Zárate2011), the implementation of the Charter can be jeopardised by private interests that collide with the Charter's principles such as large infrastructure projects and events (Kothari and Chaudhry Reference Kothari and Chaudhry2009).

The Charter has become an important way for organisations to legitimise their claims by referring to a document that has been signed by the three local statutory powers and although is not binding has encouraged social movements to demand their rights. One example is the organisations fighting against the megaproject of the Supervía (‘Super Highway’) in 2010, a project executed by Mayor Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón that relocated many neighbourhoods in the western area of Mexico City to build a toll highway. This development plan intended to connect the south end of the city with the west. The Human Rights Commission of Mexico City released a public statement as a result of numerous complaints against the project that was forcing families to leave their homes and damaging the environment.Footnote ¹⁷

The Commission relied on the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City to persuade the government to stop the project. The Charter stipulates that megaprojects must at all times consult with the people who are going to be affected and work for the better solution through consensus (Carta de la Ciudad de México por el Derecho a la Ciudad 2010: 37). Despite the Charter, the government evicted people from 126 homes and businesses from the district of Magdalena Contreras and 75 from the Alvaro Obregon district (Delgadillo Polanco Reference Delgadillo Polanco2012: 135). This megaproject was never presented to the residents of these areas, who were not consulted. Civil society organisations, activists, scholars and the affected communities came together in a single movement called the Frente Amplio Contra la Supervía (Broad Front against the Super Highway), yet the government of Mexico City still carried out the project. This event showed the contradictory dynamics of a government that both promotes rights and violates them. The Charter was not effective in this case but it was used to discredit the government by displaying its lack of commitment. The Supervía project demonstrates that the Charter remains to some degree a ‘letter of good intentions’ that is used to cover the political party in the government's interests. Despite the groundwork laid in drafting the Charter and bringing together different stakeholders for the unique purpose of promoting the right to the city, the Supervía project has shown that the Charter can serve a different purpose, one that is contrary to the right to the city (Delgadillo Polanco Reference Delgadillo Polanco2012). The local government's discourse may be one that promotes the right to the city while its actions are conflicting.

A third risk to make the right to the city work is the excessive bureaucracy that may delay its operationalisation, including the performance of the three statutory branches’ powers. The realisation of the right to the city in Mexico City is also influenced by the fact that the city does not have its own constitution. The city has a statute that can only be modified by the federal congress.Footnote ¹⁸ In this sense the right to the city has encountered a legal obstacle to advancing its realisation because of the particular jurisdiction of Mexico City that is not granted the status of a state yet it has certain political autonomy. The committee is confronting these risks by advocating for a law that upholds the right to the city at the same time that is strategising on its implementation. In addition, the committee has been promoting and mobilising for a comprehensive political reform that allows Mexico City to become the thirty-second state and have its own constitution, giving more power to the inhabitants of the city (Ramírez Zaragoza Reference Ramírez Zaragoza2013). The right to the city should be promoted beyond the city boundaries by looking at these specific limitations, and advocating for the recognition of the right at the federal level. As it is currently, the right to the city scope is limited by the way the political system is organised.

To counter these risks, Kothari and Chaudhry (Reference Kothari and Chaudhry2009: 13–14) devise six recommendations to realise the right to the city: (1) implementation of human rights commitments; (2) harmonisation of local and national laws with international human rights standards; (3) identification of the need for human rights-based urban reform; (4) development of strong political will of city governments to implement human rights and to adopt and adhere to the ‘World Charter on the Right to the City’; (5) development of consolidated plans to ensure the simultaneous and collective development of all groups, with a special focus on the immediate realisation of rights for the most marginalised; and (6) implementation of measures to check against rampant growth of the market.

Of the recommendations presented above, some have been implemented while others remain on the table due to the substantial challenges that they present. Regarding the second recommendation in particular, Mexico City has gone through a process of harmonisation of its laws with the human rights international standards and is the first city in Mexico to have a human rights assessment and a human rights program as a result of a participatory process. In relation to the third and fifth recommendations, it should be noted that the city has previous experience in building an agenda with civil society organisations particularly focusing on minorities, the Charter for the Right to the City itself being an example of this pattern. The sixth recommendation is crucial to advance the realisation of the actions described in the Charter but has not been addressed effectively as it appears that the local government has no interest in discussing the effects of the market and the interests of powerful economic actors.

Conclusion

The Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City presents a unique opportunity for social movements in Mexico City to advance their agenda and at the same time it offers the local government a possibility to reconcile and moderate conflicting interests. The implementation of the Charter requires constant consideration of the right to the city for the people in the city: the right to appropriation as the capacity to enjoy the space to live a life with dignity and the right to participation as the capacity to make decisions that produce urban space (Purcell Reference Purcell2008). The right to the city as it was shown in the Mexican case is in constant negotiation between the space that implies its realisation and the politics in place. The problem is not denying the importance of the right to the city; on the contrary, the problem is the discursive manipulation that addresses the right to the city while violates it. The Charter is not exempt from political manipulation, but such manipulation can be prevented by engagement and participation promoting its advancement. Through social mobilisation, it is possible to make the right to the city work. The obstacles can be addressed as long as people are empowered and demand their rights. Alternatively, the right to the city is a significant promise to vindicate the need for disfranchised communities and build consensus. In this sense the right to the city is powerful and persuasive but it can be used to manipulate and give false political promises by promoting a political agenda that jeopardises the realisation of the right to the city.

In sum, the Charter for the Right to the City makes a difference in the way that the space that Lefebvre identified in the introductory phrase is conceived, as a space to reason by collective action. The Charter turned five years old in 2015, and the committee needs to evaluate to what extent the Charter has advanced the right to the city and figure out the strategies to deal with the risks outlined above. The Charter is also, if promoted well, an opportunity to advocate for similar processes in other cities in the country. The experience in Mexico City can illuminate other processes and propel new alliances with other organisations across the country. A realistic goal is to work with other cities in building an alliance to claim the right to the city.

Introduction

The United States is characterised as ‘exceptionalist’ when it comes to the implementation of international human rights principles and standards (Schulz Reference Schulz2009). The United States was instrumental in developing the foundational document that has guided the formulation of human rights treaties since 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It joined with other nations to approve the Universal Declaration in the United Nations General Assembly that year.

Since that historic event, however, the United States has been slow to ratify more than a handful of UN-sanctioned human rights treaties. Moreover, the United States has attached significant ‘reservations, understandings, and declarations’ to those treaties it has signed and ratified which limit the extent to which these treaties are allowed to apply to the United States (Venetis Reference Venetis2011). There are a variety of reasons why the United States has failed to ratify most major human rights treaties and limited its obligations to fully implement those treaties it has ratified. Conservatives in Congress decry what they see as threats to US sovereignty if the nation is held accountable to an international body like the United Nations. They argue that US federal law addressing such areas as disability (e.g. the Americans with Disabilities Act) is more than sufficient and that the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities is unnecessary. Key treaties such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child go un-ratified because Congressional conservatives believe they will intrude on our federalist system of state's rights. The United States, despite its great wealth, has refused to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights which establishes an adequate standard of living as a human right. Resistance to ratification of this treaty allows high rates of domestic poverty to persist, particularly for people of colour, female heads of households, and children, without international accountability (Neubeck, Reference Neubeck, Howard-Hassmann and Welch2006a, Reference Neubeckb, Reference Neubeck, Hertel and Libal2011; Libal and Neubeck Reference Libal, Neubeck and Minkler2013). Given US exceptionalism, some may find it surprising to learn that a small but increasing number of US municipalities have pledged to abide by the principles and standards of the Universal Declaration and are designating themselves as ‘human rights cities’.

In effect, US exceptionalism, wherein the United States has ignored its domestic human rights responsibilities, has prompted increasing numbers of municipalities to endorse and undertake human rights implementation. For example, the failure of the United States to adopt the Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights treaty means the United States does not recognise housing as a human right and limits the federal funds devoted to it. Yet homelessness is visibly a major problem in most US cities and most municipal budgets are inadequate to significantly reduce, no less eliminate, this human rights violation. Housing is being progressively being called a human right by local community groups, people who are homeless, and their allies and advocates. While proponents of eliminating homelessness are calling out local elected officials for not prioritising more aid in city budgets for those who are homeless, they also call out the federal government for hypocrisy in referring to itself as a champion of human rights while allowing homelessness to persist. Human rights cities have the potential to act as incubators for the formation of groups that will undertake on-going challenges to US exceptionalism.

This chapter will discuss activities that have taken place in Eugene, Oregon, which began to address local implementation of international human rights in 2007 and continues to do so.Footnote ¹ As a member of the Eugene Human Rights Commission, I have actively participated in encouraging the implementation of human rights in Eugene and thus have had an opportunity to see first-hand the challenges and successes that have occurred since that year.

Unlike self-designated human rights cities in the United States, Eugene has been treating this title as aspirational. Local advocates see Eugene as having a long way to go to be a city in which attention to human rights guides institutional operations and people's everyday relationships. Nonetheless, as we will discuss in more detail, Eugene has made progress in ways that self-designated human rights cities in the United States have not by internalising human rights principles and standards into the operations of all City departments.Footnote ²

With the encouragement of the City's Human Rights Commission (Kaufman Reference Kaufman, Hertel and Libal2011: 95) and with the approval of the City Council, executives, managers and staff have begun to embed and institutionalise human rights norms and standards in City operations (MacNaughton and McGill Reference MacNaughton and McGill2012: 399–405; Sok and Neubeck Reference Sok, Neubeck, Armaline, Glasberg and Purkayastha2011: 240–242). Eugene has received national recognition for these implementation efforts (Columbia HRI and IAOHRA 2010: 9; Columbia HRI 2012: 12, 15, 23; US Human Rights Fund 2010: 95–97; US Human Rights Network 2012: 22). As elected officials periodically have publicly linked Eugene to the goal of becoming a human rights city, grass-roots social justice organisations have increasingly adopted human rights language in addressing local problems. A case in point is homelessness, to be discussed.

That is the story told in brief. Now it is necessary to fill in more of the details to see what can be learned from Eugene's successes and on-going challenges. I begin by briefly describing the larger context – the US human rights movement – within which human rights cities in the United States have made their debut.

The US human rights movement

Human rights cities in the United States are being created as part of the US human rights movement. This movement is seeking to build upon and extend the gains of the civil rights movement while encompassing a far wider range of fundamental rights, including social and economic human rights. As Martin Luther King Jr. stated not long before his tragic death: ‘We have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights’ (King, Jr. Reference King1967). The movement, which has arisen and slowly gathered strength and momentum over the last decade or so, is a direct attack on US exceptionalism (Thomas Reference Thomas, Soohoo, Albisa and Davis2008). It is informally led by the US Human Rights Network, founded in 2003.Footnote ³ Originally involving some 60 domestic social justice groups and organisations, USHRN'S organisational membership is now well over 300. It is an eclectic movement with national, regional, and local members who pressure governments and encourage civil society to recognise the value of using a human rights lens when it comes to legislative, program, policy, and budgetary decisions.

The issues addressed by network members include homelessness and affordable housing, health care, hunger, environmental justice, reproductive rights, capital punishment, human trafficking, along with the rights of immigrants, indigenous peoples, women, people of colour, the LGBT population, people with disabilities, workers, prisoners, and people who are impoverished (Soohoo, Albisa and Davis Reference Soohoo and Stolz2008).

The creation of human rights cities

The idea to nurture and create ‘human rights cities’ originated with the international non-profit People's Decade for Human Rights Education or PDHRE, now known as the People's Movement for Human Rights Learning. An organisational member of the US Human Rights Network, PDHRE has aided in the creation of at least seventeen human rights cities either in operation or formation in countries such as Argentina, Austria, India, Kenya, the Philippines, Canada, and Taiwan. Washington, DC was, in 2008, the first city in the United States to declare itself a human rights city. Since then, similar announcements have been made by Chapel Hill and Carrboro, NC; Richmond, CA; Boston; Pittsburgh; and Seattle.

The PDHRE model for creating a human rights city contains a number of steps, the first of which is the establishment of a city-wide, democratically functioning steering committee that represents all segments of the municipal population, with special attention to representation of those groups who have been historically disempowered and marginalised. The steering committee's charge includes (1) developing a plan of action to identify and prioritise local human rights challenges; (2) implementing learning activities so that inhabitants understand their human rights; and (3) monitoring and evaluating the work of all sectors of the human rights city on progress being made toward meeting human rights goals (Marks, Modrowski and Lichem Reference Marks, Modrowski and Lichem2008: 47–50).

Self-designation as a human rights city takes the form of resolutions and proclamations, not ordinances, and these declarations lack the force of law. However, they may help to provide a political reference point as well as legitimise and open up political space for the activities of local human rights advocates around violations of rights of concern to them (Finnegan, Saltzman, and White Reference Finnegan, Saltsman and White2010: 327–28). In the United States, progress toward creation of human rights cities has been slow. Moreover, it is not clear just how fully the PDHRE model has been implemented in the US municipalities that have designated themselves human rights cities.

The city of Eugene, Oregon, addresses human rights

Eugene, Oregon, is a Pacific Northwest city of some 160,000 residents. Home of the University of Oregon, Eugene is known as being generally politically progressive. It regularly experiences rallies, demonstrations, and vigils around such issues as militarism and war, environmental abuse, free speech, immigrant rights, corporate power, and homelessness. It is an overwhelmingly white city (like Oregon as a whole) with a poverty rate of 16.6 per cent in 2012 (Hammond Reference Hammond2013).

Eugene is governed by an eight-member City Council and the six city departments are operated from day-to-day under the supervision of a Council-appointed City Manager. Under this ‘weak mayor’ system the Mayor chairs Council meetings and votes only to break ties. The Council sets broad policy and the City Manager decides how to implement it. This arrangement gives a good deal of freedom to the City Manager who, in turn, relies heavily upon department executives, managers, and staff.

Fortunately, in the case of Eugene, from the City Manager on down, there has generally been openness to the idea of implementing the human rights framework within the city organisation. Encouragement to do so has primarily come from the Eugene Human Rights Commission (HRC), composed of community volunteers appointed by the Council, and the Human Rights and Neighborhood Involvement Office (HRNIO, formerly called the Equity and Human Rights Center), a small city-staffed unit located in the City Manager's Office. The HRC can be seen as a component of civil society, given its relative autonomy from the city organisation (on the importance of civil society to the local implementation of human rights, see Van den Berg in this volume).

Eugene's popular Mayor Kitty Piercy, during her three terms of office, has also been very supportive of local implementation in her public statements and in annual mayoral resolutions honouring UN International Human Rights Day. As the titular head of a ‘weak’ mayor system of governance (see Kamuf Ward in this volume), unlike mayors in other cities that have embraced human rights Mayor Piercy has no power over the city's adoption or implementation of human right policies. Instead she plays the role of a human rights ‘champion’ by encouraging and praising these activities (the importance of ‘champions’ is discussed later in this chapter). Mayor Piercy is somewhat unique in her actions in comparison to other ‘weak’ mayors in this regard. The cities that self-identify as human rights cities in the United States have ‘strong mayors’ who have the power to implement human rights as they see fit.

The ‘human rights framework’ developed in Eugene refers to ways in which the City can implement human rights standards and principles in its overall operations and in all departments (City of Eugene, Equity and Human Rights Center 2011a: 7). The framework calls on the city organisation and elected officials to proactively identify and seek solutions to human rights problems and issues; address human rights violations even when these violations can be considered unintentional; establish mechanisms to insure active public participation in human rights problem identification and in establishing solutions; be transparent and open about all government decisions bearing on people's human rights; be publicly accountable for progress in remedying human rights problems by timetables, benchmarks, and appropriate measures; and, finally, to provide education to all residents about their human rights and how they can seek redress for rights violations.

The human rights framework reflects the core set of values of the human rights culture that the HRC and HRNIO have been nurturing in the city organisation since 2007. The work is carried out under annual HRC work plans reviewed and approved by the City Council, to which the HRC reports (see, e.g. City of Eugene Human Rights Commission 2013).

Human rights implementation within the city organisation

With encouragement of the Eugene Human Rights Commission and its support staff in the HRNIO, and with cooperation by the City Manager, departmental executives, managers, and staff, the City of Eugene has implemented a number of internal policies and practices since 2007 that are positive in terms of demonstrating a commitment to human rights and becoming a human rights city. It is a municipal leader in this regard. We will discuss some examples in this section and reasons for the success of these policies and practices.

Conclusion

A number of developments have occurred within Eugene's city organisation that are promising in terms of Eugene's becoming a human rights city. Here I will recapitulate the conditions I believe have contributed to the success of these internal developments.

Of utmost importance is the fact that Eugene's city organisation has translators who can explain the importance and meaning of the human rights framework and point to ways it is already being used in many instances, although not recognised as such. The translators are assisted by the existence of champions who offer praise, encouragement, and recognition of programs, policies and practices that strive to be in conformity with human rights values and standards.

Translators and champions facilitate the progressive institutionalisation of human rights values and standards in the guiding documents of the city organisation, such as the DESP and the TBL tool. This helps to create a human rights culture even as individual organisational members come and go. This culture can be sustained by providing regular access to human rights training for both incoming and existing staff, managers, and executives to help them in using the human rights lens to identify ways to implement human rights in their own work.

Eugene has been able to maintain its human rights efforts even while devoting minimal resources toward becoming a human rights city. The greatest investment entails encouraging on-going rethinking and reimagining of how the work of all city departments can be done more effectively when informed by the human rights framework. The question of costs and resources primarily comes into play in the early stages of discussing adopting human rights principles and standards in carrying out municipal operations. It is important that key organisational decision-makers can articulate to the broader community how the benefits to the organisation and to the community outweigh costs, and that those costs are quite minimal.

Eugene's city organisation generally has respect for community and treats it as an asset. This makes it easier for its departments to establish relationships and form partnerships with community stakeholders that can help the city organisation become more transparent and collaborative in its efforts to identify community needs and to meet them. Listening to the ideas of community members helps the city organisation to think outside the box and be imaginative and mindful in coming up with ideas that will bring the city organisation's operations ever closer to conformity with human rights norms in all departments. In doing so, they not only model human rights values and standards outward to the community, but operate in opposition to US exceptionalism. By incorporating the human rights framework and encouraging its use across all city departments, the City of Eugene is meeting human rights obligations that the federal government has turned its back upon. At the same time that the human rights framework has become institutionalised within the city organisation with some success, it has begun to be picked up and used by grassroots groups to hold the city accountable for meeting its human rights obligations to the community. From a human rights perspective, both of these are progressive developments. It is more common than not for human rights violations and complaints to arise from the mistreated and marginalised, and for their voices to be amplified by vocal community allies.

It is important to underscore that the struggles that go on between homeless advocates and Eugene's city council, and the victories that have been achieved in increasing public support for the idea of housing as a human right, are also pushbacks against US exceptionalism. As human rights language and rhetoric becomes more of a lingua franca shared and used by more and more segments of the community, and by people in other cities and states, US exceptionalism when it comes to domestic human rights implementation is undermined. Herein lies the importance of what is going on in Eugene and increasingly in other cities in the United States.