Traditional legal accounts of human rights focus on the international level, describing how nations ratify human rights treaties to create international legal obligations to respect, protect and fulfil human rights. However, enforcing international law is a tricky proposition, and the direct and immediate impact that treaty ratification has on bringing about change in countries that have ratified treaties is debatable. Human rights cities invert the traditional analysis. Instead of focusing on the national government as the main instigator of change, human rights cities reflect a bottom up approach where local communities articulate a commitment to human rights and decide how to implement and give expression to their commitment.
Rather than relying on laws and policies imposed by the national government, the human rights cities movement promotes human rights through the dissemination of human rights principles and strategies within and among networks of cities and activists and other formal and informal channels. These channels transcend the artificial confines of national borders. Cities, as natural crossroads for new ideas, are uniquely situated to be involved in trans-national discussions about fundamental rights. City dwellers may have more to gain from engaging in dialogues with counterparts in other countries, who are dealing with similar issues and have similar orientations, than with neighbouring towns and rural areas that share the same nationality.
International human rights treaties are often abstract documents written in diplomatic, carefully negotiated and aspirational language. Situating human rights implementation at the local level where governmental policies are implemented provides a welcome concreteness. While human rights commitments often embody a lofty tone, city governments must figure out how to reconcile sometimes conflicting commitments with the day to day pressures of service delivery, budgets and politics. Institutionally, they are better equipped to develop policies that are designed to ensure human rights than are national and regional governments or courts.
The essays in this book reflect both the challenges and the potential for human rights cities. Cities that choose to become ‘human rights cities’ define the scope of their commitments. When this is done through a participatory process, it can result in stronger adherence to norms and rights that are self-proclaimed and embraced by the community. However, there is a danger in letting governments choose the human rights which they will adhere to and prioritise. Similarly, when cities are left to create their own accountability measures, the measures are often weak or non-existent. The chapters in this volume share some innovative ideas to improve accountability. But perhaps the area in which human rights cities have the most to contribute is in developing new methods to generate human rights solutions. In this way, cities are expanding the meaning of human rights implementation beyond government accountability for rights violations to the development of methods and structures to infuse human rights into their day-to-day work of governance and service provision.
Theories of local human rights implementation
The role of international and national authorities
Historically, the Achilles heel of international human rights law has been enforcement. However, over the last three decades, great strides have been made in creating and strengthening international accountability and monitoring mechanisms (Soohoo and Stolz Reference Soohoo and Stolz2008). In order to give teeth to countries’ obligations to comply with international human rights treaties, UN treaty monitoring bodies have been strengthened and given enhanced powers to hear individual complaints and conduct inquiries. The United Nations has created special procedures (usually in the form of Special Rapporteurs and Working Groups) that monitor and report on human rights issues, and in 2006, the Universal Periodic Review was established to review human rights compliance for all UN member states on a regular basis (Mertus Reference Mertus2009b). At the regional level, the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights can issue binding decisions against nations that are party to the regional human rights treaties.
Although state compliance is still uneven, the development of human rights institutions since the Cold War has expanded the number of forums for national accountability and increased pressure for nations to comply with their international human rights obligations. But these new mechanisms have not been designed with subnational governments in mind. For instance, as Davis and Frate discuss in this volume, when nations are reviewed for their compliance with human rights treaties, it is the national government that appears at the reviews, and there is no formal role for regional, state or local governments (Davis and Frate in this volume).
The attempt to incorporate state and city information into UN reviews of US treaty compliance illustrates the challenges of bringing subnational governments before international human rights bodies. In response to activist pressure, the US government has begun to provide state information in its reports to treaty bodies and has included state and local officials in its delegation when it appears for reviews (Davis in this volume). However, the United States’ actual reporting on state practices has not been robust. Data from states is often incomplete or omitted altogether. For instance, when questioned by the UN Human Rights Committee (the treaty body that oversees compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) about juveniles under 18 criminally tried as adults, the US response described federal practices, which are generally compliant with human rights law, but neglected to mention that approximately 200,000 juveniles are tried as adults in state criminal proceedings each year (Griffin et al. Reference Griffin, Addie, Adams and Firestine2011).Footnote 1 Similarly, although the United States included the Mayor of Salt Lake City in its delegation to Geneva for the same review, it was clear that the mayor's role was conceived as an opportunity to tout the progressive policies of Salt Lake and not to answer questions about rights violations occurring there (Davis in this volume).
Even if countries were serious about involving subnational governments in treaty reviews, there is a capacity problem at the United Nations. US activists have pushed their government to include more state and local information in its reports, but even without extensive state and local information the United States’ 2011 report to the Human Rights Committee was 188 pages – significantly longer than the reports the Committee typically receives. During the review, the Committee also received more than 170 reports from NGOs. Treaty bodies are composed of unpaid experts who meet three times a year and review several countries in each session. The experts are already over-worked and under resourced (Henkin et al. Reference Henkin, Cleveland, Helfer, Neuman and Orentlicher2009; Oomen Reference Oomen2014). Given the current strains on treaty bodies, it seems unrealistic to suggest that they can meaningfully review the human rights compliance of subnational government units.
Yet, despite the lack of formal standing and lack of capacity for subnational governments to participate in human rights treaty reviews, it is clear as a matter of international law that their actions and omissions can constitute human rights violations.Footnote 2 Although treaty bodies cannot monitor subnational human rights practices on a comprehensive basis, these bodies do raise egregious human rights violations committed by state and local governments when reported and sufficiently documented by NGOs. On occasion, international scrutiny coupled with media attention can pressure state and local actors to make positive changes even if they are not participating in reviews. But the traditional international human rights response to local rights violations is that it is the national government's responsibility to take steps to address them.
One structural way that countries can address local human rights violations is by making them directly actionable in national courts. In countries where international law obligations are directly enforceable in domestic courts, courts can be used to compel subnational authorities to comply with human rights obligations. For instance, under the United Kingdom's Human Rights Act of 1998, litigants can bring actions against local authorities in British courts alleging violations of the European Convention on Human Rights (UK Ministry of Justice 2006). However, national legal systems differ in their treatment and recognition of international law as well as the power of courts to meaningfully review or compel government actions. In countries where the domestic courts are not amenable to hearing claims involving human rights violations, the national government must find other ways to address human rights violations committed by subnational authorities.
How national governments can make subnational authorities comply with human rights obligations raises considerations about the limits and possibilities of subsidiarity and federalism. Where state or local actors have violated rights protected by existing national laws or policies, the national government can pressure local actors to change their practices. When dealing with egregious wrongs or recalcitrant local authorities, the national government can launch inquiries, institute legal proceedings to compel compliance, or seek to prosecute wrong-doers. If actions or policies do not violate existing laws but raise serious human rights concerns, the national government can consider developing legislation and plans of action that create new domestic obligations for local authorities consistent with human rights obligations. It also can articulate national standards that comply with human rights obligations. These standards can be encouraged through political and moral pressure and reinforced through technical assistance, training, and incentives including the receipt or loss of funds.
In addition to setting standards, adopting legislation, and creating national plans, national governments can also take steps to enable and encourage local human rights leadership through resource allocation. The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe (CoE Local and Regional Congress, discussed in greater detail below) has stressed the need for national governments to ensure that adequate resources are allocated to local and regional authorities to properly implement human rights.Footnote 3 Similarly, US mayors and local human rights agencies have emphasised the need for federal guidance and resources (Kamuf Ward in this volume). Resources become critically important where local implementation of human rights includes ensuring access to basic services. For instance, the UN Committee that oversees compliance with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has emphasised that national governments must ensure that municipalities have sufficient resources to facilitate access to water.Footnote 4 Providing national assistance to local governments to enable them to take a leadership role in human rights implementation also can help navigate the potential tension between the national government's international responsibility to ensure human rights compliance and its respect for the autonomy of local authorities (Van den Berg in this volume).
There has been increased recognition that domestic conversations about human rights should be a two way street. Local experience should inform and identify priorities for national human rights initiatives. The CoE Local and Regional Congress encourages local and regional governments to contribute to national human indicators.Footnote 5 Cities can also make human rights demands against the national government. In this volume, Darling describes how cities experiencing the impact of the United Kingdom's national asylum support policies have come together in the Dignity not Destitution campaign, which casts the need for reform in human rights terms.
There are many ways in which national governments can influence subnational authorities, and new approaches should be encouraged. However, in federalist countries like the United States, there are constitutional as well as political limitations on the federal government's ability to require that state and local governments implement human rights obligations. Even though the national government is responsible for the actions of state and local governments, there are instances when the national government does not have the time, power, or incentive to police state and local compliance. It is because of these limitations that local efforts to implement human rights are intriguing.
The role of networks and NGOs
Despite the limitations of the top-down approach to human rights implementation, there is a simplicity in focusing on what national governments do to make good on their international obligations. However, the power of human rights to effect change goes far beyond formal channels to implement treaty obligations. In order to properly access the impact and potential of human rights to change laws and policies, scholars have described how human rights norms can become accepted over time and then reflected in laws, policies and behaviour (Risse, Ropp and Sikkink Reference Risse, Ropp and Sikkink1999). Instead of just being implemented through national initiatives that target local behaviour in a ‘top down’ process, the norms are disseminated in an organic fashion through formal and informal networks of activists and government officials. This ‘norm diffusion’ has enormous potential to make change. As Judith Resnik states ‘[l]aws, like people migrate. Legal borders like, physical ones, are permeable, and seepage is everywhere’ (Resnik Reference Resnik2006). Human rights migration can occur from city to city as well as from person to person. This volume describes multiple instances where cities shared model human rights legislation or where city officials were inspired by counterparts from other cities to embrace human rights. For instance, Montréal's Charter of Rights and Responsibilities (Montréal Charter) was modelled on the European Charter for Safeguarding Human Rights in the City (European Charter), and Utrecht's interest in human rights was spurred after its mayor was invited to speak at a conference on local human rights (Frate and Oomen in this volume). Cities are increasingly networked through voluntary associations and formal governance structures for local governments. Benjamin Barber estimates that there are hundreds of intercity associations (Barber Reference Barber2013). These networks provide venues to share human rights principles and strategies. These structures can simply provide a place to exchange ideas or play a more intentional role in encouraging local human rights initiatives. Networks can reinforce and concretise human rights commitments through the adoption of charters or resolutions, and local government associations can make human rights implementation part of their agendas. In this volume, García Chueca describes how a human rights cities movement in Europe in the 1990s became an informal network that drafted the European Charter in 2000. Ensuing bi-annual conferences provided opportunities for signatory cities to exchange good practices and peer learning (García Chueca in this volume). United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), one of the oldest networks of cities, has become the institutional home for the European Charter. The UCLG also adopted the Global Charter-Agenda for Human Rights in the City in 2011 (Global Charter), which was inspired by the European Charter (García Chueca in this volume; Kamuf Ward in this volume).
In Europe, the Council of Europe and the European Union have created governance structures for local and regional authorities. These structures provide regular venues for cities to express commitments to human rights and exchange ideas about implementation. The CoE Local and Regional Congress represents 200,000 local and regional governments. It has issued resolutions recognising the obligation of local and regional authorities to comply with and promote human rights (García Chueca in this volume; Starl in this volume). It also recognises the Congress’ role as a forum to raise awareness and pool experiences and good practices. The Congress has authorised its Monitoring Committee to collect data on local and regional human rights situations and to issue a report with comparative data every five years.Footnote 6
Similarly, the Committee of the Regions, an advisory body that represents regional and local authorities in the EU, passed a resolution on the Charter for Multilateral Governance in Europe in 2014 which committed to ‘ensuring maximum fundamental rights protections at all levels of Governments’ (Starl in this volume). The EU also created the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), which is dedicated to implementing human rights in multiple levels of government (Van den Berg in this volume).
In the United States, Resnik has described how organisations of state and local officials can serve as networks to disseminate norms and practices (Resnik Reference Resnik2006). In this volume, Kamuf Ward discusses how these organisations are adopting a human rights agenda. In 2013, the US Conference of Mayors (USCM) adopted a resolution committing to uphold and promote international human rights, which recognised mayors’ role ‘on the front lines’ of ensuring equality and enabling access to housing, health care, and education (Kamuf Ward in this volume). The USCM also launched the US Coalition of Cities against Racism and Discrimination in partnership with the US State Department and UNESCO, and the San Francisco Women's Commission is leading a Cities for CEDAW campaign (Kamuf Ward in this volume).
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) also have a role to play. Scholars have described how NGOs function as ‘norm entrepreneurs’ (Koh Reference Koh1997). NGOs influence local governments in the same way that they influence national governments and international institutions. NGOs develop civil society support, building a human rights consciousness that helps reform-minded city officials make changes (Van den Berg in this volume). NGOs can also promote the concept of human rights cities through direct work with city governments or community based organisations to educate and provide technical assistance. For instance, the People's Decade for Human Rights Education (PDHRE) developed a model that aided in the development of at least seventeen Human Rights Cities, predominantly in the Americas and Asia (Neubeck in this volume). Van den Berg describes how Amnesty International and the Netherlands Association of Dutch Municipalities put out briefing papers on human rights for municipalities. Amnesty then used its connections to facilitate meetings to support development of human rights in several cities in the Netherlands (Van den Berg in this volume).
The potential of human rights cities
From an activist's perspective, focusing on human rights at the local level makes strategic sense. Cities have a population concentration that makes it easier to share and disseminate ideas and to organise around issues. Cities are gateways for new ideas. Bound together through trade and commerce, cities are naturally interconnected, and city dwellers embody mobility and diversity (Barber Reference Barber2013). Cities may seek to differentiate themselves from national, state, or regional politics and find that their needs, ideals, and values are more in line with other cities than the towns or countryside that immediately surround them. As a result, it may be easier to get cities to embrace new human rights commitments than national governments, which must take into account the diverse views of both progressive and conservative enclaves. As described in this volume, Montréal and cities in the United States have adopted human rights commitments that their national governments have not accepted. Many US cities have endorsed the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) even though the United States has not ratified the treaties (Davis in this volume). Similarly, the Montréal Charter provides more protection on economic and social rights than Canadian national law (Frate in this volume). In addition to being more open to human rights commitments, cities may also directly challenge national policies that violate human rights (Darling and Oomen in this volume).
Collectively, cities have tremendous power to bring about change. Today, the majority of people live in urban areas (Blank Reference Blank2010). Barber argues that working through expanded and diversified networks, cities have the potential to address global problems in ways that nations cannot (Barber Reference Barber2013).
The nature of what cities do also makes them intriguing sites for human rights implementation. Local governments work on the ground where violations occur and where policies that impact people's daily lives are made and implemented (Grigolo Reference Grigolo2011b; Starl in this volume). Grigolo argues that ‘cities provide the level of human rights protection closest to the people, and, eventually, the best level of interpretation and implementation of human rights’ (Grigolo Reference Grigolo2011b). In federalist countries, responsibility for certain governmental functions are delegated to subnational authorities, and successful human rights implementation in those areas requires state and local engagement (Davis and Kamuf Ward in this volume). Even in non-federalist countries, there is a trend favouring decentralisation and increasing the responsibilities of municipal governments, especially in the area of service provision where the principle of subsidiarity suggests that the level of government closest to the people will be more responsive to local needs (Pestova and Van den Berg in this volume).
When done correctly, human rights implementation at the local level responds to critiques that the imposition of international standards ignores local context and forces Western values on other countries and communities. Indeed, although the human rights city movement is characterised in part by inspiration and models of implementation that transcend borders, successful implementation requires local adoption and acceptance. This is reflected in the Global Charter. It provides that the Charter will become effective in signatory cities ‘after it goes through a consultation process that allows the inhabitants of the city to discuss it and adapt the terms of implementation of the action plan to local conditions and to the national legal framework and upon its adoption by the city council’.Footnote 7 Similarly, the PDHRE model emphasises that human rights cities should be community-based initiatives that develop through a participatory process that identifies and prioritises local human rights challenges (Neubeck in this volume).
Approaches to local human rights implementation
There is considerable variation in the approaches that human rights cities adopt. Some cities may recognise additional human rights standards that are not protected by national or regional law. But what is unique about human rights cities is their ability to focus on creating ‘systemic and proactive solutions’ (Kamuf Ward in this volume). This approach reflects the traditional role that local governments play in developing and instituting policies, providing services and balancing the demands of multiple constituencies. By focusing on the level of government that provides services and develops and implements policies, human rights cities provide unique opportunities to meaningfully implement governments’ affirmative obligations to protect and fulfil rights.
Responding to human rights violations
Before discussing the ways in which cities are working to infuse human rights into their policy making and service delivery, it is interesting to note that none of the cities described in this volume have created legal remedies that allow individuals or groups who have suffered human rights violations to sue for damages or other relief. To the extent that cities include a complaint mechanism, they have favoured less adversarial methods of conflict resolution and broader public consultations. This is consistent with the approach taken by the CoE Regional and Local Congress and the European Charter, which describe mediation and ombudsperson's offices as examples of complaints mechanisms.Footnote 8
It is, perhaps, unsurprising that regional and local governments do not advocate creating new avenues for litigation. But a non-adversarial approach also may reflect cultural preferences and a deliberate choice to create venues that focus on resolving disputes rather than vindicating rights. For instance in contrast to the adversarial legal culture in the US, Oomen describes Dutch political culture as characterised by ‘corporatism, consensualism, judicial reticence and informal pragmatism’ (Oomen Reference Oomen2014). Consistent with this approach, Frate writes that the Montréal Charter provides an ombudsman as the sole recourse when complaints arise under the Charter (Frate in this volume). The ombudsman has the power to mediate or to conduct an investigation followed by the issuance of a report and recommendations. Although the process has the advantage of being free and ‘relatively fast’ (Frate in this volume), it does not provide a judicial determination of rights or a binding decision.
In addition to providing a mechanism to resolve individual complaints, where human rights conflicts involve a broader set of stakeholders, some local human rights documents provide opportunities for public consultations. The CoE Regional and Local Congress recommends that its members promote consultation processes that ‘enabl[e] all participants in local public life to exchange information on the human rights situation and arrive at agreed responses to problems that arise’.Footnote 9 Similarly, the Montréal Charter creates a ‘right of initiative’ which allows Montréalers to demand a public consultation through a petition and signature process (Frate in this volume).
These types of consultative processes make sense where conflicts arise concerning city policies that affect many stakeholders and that may stretch the limits of the court's institutional competence and expertise. Indeed, even in instances where judicial systems recognise a cause of action for rights violations arising out of local government policies, judicial remedies often require engagement and consultation rather than dictating a specific outcome. For instance, the South African Constitutional Court has adopted an ‘engagement’ remedy in housing rights cases that requires municipalities to engage in negotiation and mediation when municipal housing policies require evicting tenants (Ray Reference Ray2010). Similarly, Pestova describes cases addressing the right to supply safe drinking water where Indian courts ‘have directed parties to set up a committee consisting of the responsible authorities and relevant stakeholders with a view to work out solutions to ensure the implementation of the judgment’ (Pestova in this volume).
Starl contrasts institutional responses to a Salzburg law banning begging in public space (Starl in this volume). The law was challenged in the courts and was eventually found unconstitutional because it violated the right to freedom of expression. Although the court's decision made clear that one of the city's responses to poverty and homelessness was unconstitutional, it did not generate a solution. Starl describes how Salzburg's commitment to protect vulnerable groups and to prohibit unequal treatment between residents and non-residents as a signatory to the European Charter led to consultations and the development of comprehensive strategy to provide shelter, services and legal work.
Infusing human rights into policy making and service delivery
Taking governments’ duties to protect and ensure human rights seriously demands more than articulating rights and providing redress when rights are violated. Ensuring human rights requires integrating human rights principles into policy making. Cities are the natural place to do this. They are the level of government closest to the people and bear the primary responsibility to deliver government services. They also possess institutional and managerial expertise and an ability to engage with multiple stakeholders and develop and refine policies in ways that courts and national and regional governments cannot.
In this volume, Kamuf Ward posits that while the language of human rights may be new to city governments, a human rights framework aligns with good governance. She suggests that ‘human rights standards offer a roadmap that can improve a mayor's “capacity to govern” – to identify local problems and develop sustainable strategies to address them’ (Kamuf Ward in this volume). The European Charter concurs that ‘good administration of cities requires respect for, and a guarantee of human rights for all inhabitants’. One important way to make human rights a reality is for city officials to integrate human rights into their day-to-day work.
Principles and substantive commitments in service provision
Most human rights cities explicitly recognise the link between service provision and human rights. The European Charter states that ‘social policies [are] a decisive part of [city] policies for the protection of human rights and they undertake to guarantee these rights within the limits of their authority’.Footnote 10 Similarly, the US Conference of Mayors resolution on human rights recognises mayors’ role in enabling access to housing, health care, and education (Kamuf Ward in this volume).
Global and European local human rights documents articulate affirmative minimum obligations and human rights principles in the delivery of services. Common principles regarding service delivery include efficiency, quality, access, availability, and affordability of services.Footnote 11 The European Charter states that city dwellers are entitled to ‘free and smooth access to general municipal services’. It also emphasises that social policies should be ‘aimed expressly at the most disadvantaged’.Footnote 12 Non-discrimination and equal access to public services is also an important principle.Footnote 13 The European Charter explicitly defines citizens who are entitled to services and protection under the charter as ‘all persons who inhabit the signatory cities, irrespective of their nationality’.Footnote 14 It also articulates a commitment to the protection of the most vulnerable groups and citizens, stating that cities shall ‘adopt policies in support of the most vulnerable’.Footnote 15
The European and Global Charters also establish that cities must provide an adequate minimum level of certain services. For instance the Global Charter states that the ‘city guarantees all its inhabitants equal access to drinking water and sanitation services, in adequate amounts and quality’ and ‘guarantees a minimum level of water and food supply and prohibits cuts in the supply of water for people in precarious situations’.Footnote 16 The Charters also provide goals for service delivery. For instance, the European Charter states ‘municipal authorities endeavour to ensure an appropriate supply of homes’.Footnote 17
Building human rights into planning and management
The CoE Congress on Regional and Local Authorities invites its members to develop human rights bodies and procedures to implement and review human rights in the provision of local public services.Footnote 18 One important way to make human rights part of service delivery is to explicitly consider the human rights impacts of budgeting decisions. The Congress recommends that its members ‘examine local government budgets from a human rights perspective so that human rights are given appropriate attention when priority needs are being decided’.Footnote 19 Similarly, the European Charter states that signatory cities undertake to set up budgets that enable implementation of charter rights and provides that cities ‘may establish a system of “citizens” participation in the budget’.Footnote 20 PDHRE emphasises the importance of influencing the city budget or developing an alternative participatory budget as an advocacy tool (PDHRE 2007).
Another procedural approach to human rights implementation is the managerial approach adopted by the US city of Eugene, Oregon that Neubeck describes in this volume. In Eugene, the human rights framework has become a ‘core set of values’ within the city's organisation (Neubeck in this volume). Each city department is charged with developing and implementing a plan to integrate human rights concepts through its work (Neubeck in this volume). Eugene also has developed a tool to access the impact of proposals involving programs, policies and budgets called the Triple Bottom Line (TBL). The TBL incorporates protecting, respecting, and fulfilling human rights into its analysis (Kamuf Ward and Neubeck in this volume). Van den Berg describes a similar approach in Utrecht where a human rights policy memo helped identify good practices and human rights issues that should be looked at more closely (Van den Berg in this volume).
Monitoring and review processes
Beyond integrating human rights into planning and management, human rights documents have emphasised the need for accountability mechanisms to measure, monitor and review human rights implementation. The Global Charter contemplates that signatory cities will develop indicators for each right contained in the charter.Footnote 21 The Global Charter, European Charter and the CoE Regional and Local Congress also advocate for the creation of expert bodies and independent commissions to ensure implementation, evaluation, and review.Footnote 22 In addition, both the European and Global Charters envision public involvement in evaluating charter implementation.Footnote 23
In this volume, Davis describes two examples of monitoring mechanisms set up by local authorities in the United States. When the city of San Francisco adopted CEDAW as its local law, it set up a task force that reviewed agency compliance with CEDAW (Davis and Kamuf Ward in this volume). Dane County, Wisconsin, employed a directive approach when it adopted a Right to Housing Resolution in 2012. The resolution called on the County to develop a housing plan. It left it up to government officials to work out the specifics of the plan, but articulated specific policy outcomes as indicators, such as increasing the number of single room occupancy housing units by a hundred units and set specific deadlines. The resolution also required annual reporting as a mechanism for review and oversight (Davis in this volume).
Public participation and engagement
In contrast to models that focus on government structures, PDHRE emphasises human rights movement building and education. PDHRE's model requires extensive public engagement and commitment before cities are designated human rights cities (PDHRE 2007). Under the model, human rights steering committees composed of groups working on major issues affecting the city and city officials engage citizens in human rights education followed by citizen reporting on human rights violations and realisation.Footnote 24 When the city of Rosario, Argentina became the first human rights city in 1997, its Commitment Act was signed by 35 institutions and a steering committee was set up that included both government and non-government organisations (PDHRE 2007). In Mexico City, the process leading up to the adoption of the Mexico City Charter included a multi-stakeholder committee from government and civil society, 30 public forums, and consultation of more than 5,000 people. The Charter was then signed by three branches of government and civil society organisations. The Charter now serves as a collective agenda for government and civil society (Sánchez Rodríguez in this volume).
Rather than leaving human rights implementation solely up to city officials, the PDHRE model envisions continued active citizen involvement in agenda setting and prioritising through participatory budgeting and other means.Footnote 25 In this way PDHRE envisions human rights cities ‘bringing together a medley of institutions demonstrating that it is possible to agree on proposals to carry them forward, working on what we have in common and creating space to analyse the conflicts…and find plausible answers in the human rights framework’ (PDHRE 2007).
Although the human rights managerial, monitoring and participatory models each emphasise different key actors, they should not be viewed as mutually exclusive and may prove more effective when employed in concert. The managerial model presents tremendous potential to develop government policies that work to fulfil human rights. However, the lack of strong accountability and enforcement mechanisms means that cities’ ability to meet their potential rests on the commitment of government officials and local communities. The need for ‘political will’ and support for human rights may be addressed by PDHRE's emphasis on educating and mobilising popular support for human rights. Similarly, after the participatory model envisioned by PDHRE develops a collective agenda, realisation of the agenda will be strengthened by the creation of monitoring bodies and processes for governments to implement and refine policies including processes to ensure on-going community input.
Challenges
Even in cities with a human rights infrastructure and strong support for human rights there is a danger that the human rights principles will not be respected when faced with contentious issues, budgetary restrictions or powerful special interests. In this volume, Sánchez Rodríguez describes how despite the strong public and governmental support for the Mexico City Charter, the Charter failed to be effective in preventing a major development project which had the backing of private interests. Similarly, despite Eugene's commitment to human rights and the engaged human rights activism around homelessness, Neubeck describes how the City Council has ‘hit a wall of inaction’. He suggests that this was due in part to budget constraints and the lack of support in some sectors of the community who may harbour ‘antipathy toward Eugene's homeless’ and object to spending tax dollars on additional services (Neubeck in this volume).
Too great an emphasis on cities as the location for human rights enforcement or innovation runs a risk of leaving other parts of the nation behind. Although allowing communities to define the scope of their human rights commitments is an important principal of democratic participation and pragmatic politics, it can result in the lack of human rights infrastructure in the areas where it is most needed because the majority of the population is hostile or indifferent to human rights. Further, when human rights cities adopt a limited set of human rights commitments, they may privilege rights that resonate with the majority while leaving unpopular vulnerable groups and more politically contentious rights behind. In this volume, Oomen describes how Graz defined itself as a human rights city, but did not address the position of undocumented migrants. In the United States during the civil rights era, it was important for federal authorities to take the lead to address racial discrimination and segregation because state and local authorities approved of or promoted discriminatory policies. Traditionally, human rights activism has played a similar role of providing individuals and groups whose rights are violated by their national governments an opportunity to appeal to the international community (Risse, Ropp and Sikkink Reference Risse, Ropp and Sikkink1999).
Conclusion
Human rights cities should not be looked at in isolation. Each city exists within a national, and sometimes state or regional, legal system, which can provide human rights protection through constitutional, national and regional, or state law. Each level of government has a unique and potentially collaborative role to play. As the level of government with direct responsibility to the international community, the national government is responsible for explaining and defending the country's human rights record and responding to international criticism for rights violations. Consistent with its international obligations and its own commitment to human rights, the national government must take a strong leadership role in ensuring that its human rights obligations are fulfilled throughout the country and at all levels of government.
National governments have significant tools to bring about human rights compliance. The constitution and national laws often set minimum standards protecting human rights, either in domestic laws or through incorporation of international human rights obligations into national law. The national government can provide guidance through adoption of policies and standards. It can also create an enabling atmosphere for subnational governments to protect and promote human rights through education, technical assistance, funding, and moral leadership.
An in depth analysis of the role that regional and state governments can play in human rights implementation is beyond the scope of this chapter, but a few observations can be made. Although they are insulated from direct international pressure and engagement with international and regional human rights bodies, state and regional governments that are committed to human rights can play a similar role to national governments by creating minimum legal protections and providing technical assistance, guidance, education, and funding. Regional and state governments can also fill gaps where national law and authorities fail to act or where the constitutional structure gives them primary authority. For instance, although the US constitution does not recognise economic and social rights, many state constitutions do, creating opportunities for advocacy and leadership at the state level that are unavailable at the federal level (Davis Reference Davis2006; Soohoo and Goldberg Reference Soohoo and Goldberg2010).
Like regional governments, cities can, and often do, create an additional layer of rights protections. For instance, the New York City Human Rights Law provides protections against discrimination that are much more comprehensive than state and national laws, and many cities have endorsed human rights treaties that their national governments have not ratified. Cities can also have impacts beyond their borders. Reversing the traditional paradigm of vertical implementation where national governments pressure subnational authorities to implement human rights obligations, cities are increasingly raising human rights obligations to challenge national immigration and funding policies that harm city residents (Darling and Oomen in this volume).
But cities are more than mini-nations, and they have the potential to do much more than create an additional level of rights protections. When it comes to actually figuring out the policies and trade-offs that are inherent in the long process of rights realisation, the city is where the action is. International bodies and national governments can become mired in politics that lead to inaction, delay or watered-down commitments, but cities must pick up the garbage (Barber Reference Barber2013). Cities have significant experience in resolving, and incentive to resolve the difficult issues of prioritisation and resource allocation inherent in service delivery. They also have the advantage of being the level of government closest to the people, creating more opportunities for residents to lead or participate in identifying human rights needs, priorities, and solutions.
Because of their dynamism and progressive orientation, cities have been recognised as laboratories for innovation on contemporary issues like climate change. Barber argues that because city governments are less partisan, pragmatic and solution oriented, they are natural sites for innovation and problem solving (Barber Reference Barber2013). Delivering services in a manner that protects and ensures human rights similarly requires new ideas and solutions. Indeed, although there is much to learn from the innovation and experiences of others, the particular solutions adopted by cities should reflect local conditions and priorities. In discussing the challenges facing cities around education, Barber writes ‘[t]he debate is not about the goal but the means…The strength of cities is their variety and their capacity to experiment. Best practices are likely to be situational and parochial, geared to the needs of particular places and cultures’.
Cities cannot and should not replace the work of international, national and regional authorities in protecting human rights. The progress of cities will be haphazard and uneven. National authorities, guided by their international law obligations, must protect the rights of all residents, regardless of where they live. Sole reliance on local governments can place the rights of groups that are marginalised or unpopular with the local majority at risk. Courts also provide an important check on political processes that fail to protect or violate individual rights. But cities add something unique and important to the mix. In the human rights context, cities’ distinctive functions and relationship with residents create the potential to move beyond rights protection to the generation of human rights solutions. As discussed in this volume, cities can do this by incorporating human rights standards into their planning and decision making. Inherent in their urban geography, cities have a unique ability to engage residents in conversations about human rights realisation, creating opportunities for innovation and generation of solutions and policies that promote the dignity, equality, and well-being of residents.
This chapter should be considered both a conclusion to a multi-disciplinary research endeavour and an attempt to incorporate some of the key findings and issues of this research into a more coherent sociological understanding of the human rights city as a social construction. Oomen's introductory overview and the more specific studies contributed to this volume show a variety of human rights cities. Overall, the reality for many cities is often a mix of tradition and innovation (see Soohoo in this volume) as well as mismatch between aspirations and actions.
In this chapter, I treat the human rights city as a practice which, while participating in the broader practice of human rights, also departs from it in some important respects. This chapter argues that the specificity of the human rights city emerges at different contact points between ‘human rights’ and the ‘city’. Moving from these premises, the first part of this chapter highlights my approach to the human rights city as practice. The second part explores the relation of co-production involved in human rights city projects, focusing on the local government and civil society and tensions built into the human rights city between government and justice. The third part explores the human rights city and its relation to the practice of the right to the city, highlighting discontinuities and continuities. The fourth part looks more closely at the institutions of the city that sustain the practice at the implementation level, emphasising the position and role of city employees. The conclusion makes an argument about the added value of sociology to the study of the human rights city, inviting reflexivity and addressing dilemmas and challenges raised by the practice of the human rights city.
The human rights city as practice
My notion of the human rights city as practice presupposes that we look at it as something in between an abstract concept that comprises different human rights cities and an idea that social actors produce, discuss and act upon. With an eye on the content of this book, a possible definition of the human rights city is a city which is organised around norms and principles of human rights.Footnote 1 To differing extents, human rights city initiatives show social actors engaged in having one or more human rights shape urban life and the space of the city by socialising its inhabitants and regulating the conduct of the local population and the local government, and the relation between them.
This definition departs from those provided in this volume and elsewhere insofar as it is not centred in the local government but the city and it does not tie the notion of human rights to ‘international human rights’ (see the introduction by Oomen) or ‘human rights as laid down in international treaties’ (see Oomen and Van den Berg Reference Oomen2014: 163). On the one hand, my definition acknowledges the possibility that a human rights city might be pursued outside the local government, and without the intervention of the local government, or with a more external support. On the other, I keep open the possibility that the actors involved in the human rights city may define and articulate human rights in ways that differ from international norms and principles. Exploring the human rights city as practice, then, requires that we look into the different processes whereby social actors collaborate and compete to define human rights and their meaning and act towards establishing these human rights as guiding and regulatory principles of urban life and space.
The variety of ways in which social actors engage with human rights can be understood as the consequences of the different discourses that, in the practice itself, the actors produce in order to support and contest certain meanings of human rights. These ‘discourses’ of human rights are intended here in a Foucauldian, post-structuralist sense: as statements of truth about human rights which are generated by the practice while at the same time constituting it, by framing and orienting it. Each discourse is also a particular knowledge of human rights, which compete with other knowledge and the alternative versions of human rights this produces. This process does not take place in a vacuum: to echo Goodale (Reference Goodale, Goodale and Merry2007: 24), ‘the practice of human rights is always embedded in preexisting relations of meaning and production’. In short, it is itself the product of a particular social context within which human rights are understood and negotiated.
At this point, we can start making sense of the continuities and discontinuities between the broader practice of human rights and the practice of the human rights city, understanding the latter as being embedded in the former and therefore obviously shaped by pre-existing meanings and discourses of human rights circulating in the practice. Human rights as we know them from the international regime and state practice are the set of notions and institutions within which the human rights city is constructed and which influence the human rights city to the extent that the actors involved in it take this knowledge of human rights as a given reality. From the Bourdieusian viewpoint advocated by Rask Madsen (Reference Rask Madsen, Madsen and Verschraegen2013), it is possible to suggest that this knowledge of human rights is produced in the ‘field’ of human rights in the context of the relation of collaboration and competition between some core actors, that is, international organisations, states and the law (via the intervention of lawyers and other judicial and legal actors). This knowledge of human rights is itself a powerful discourse, structuring our own understanding and use of human rights (O'Byrne Reference O'Byrne2012). This discourse tells us that human rights are universal and equal rights that are primarily individual; they are defined primarily by the law; they are justiciable civil and political rights and programmatic economic, social and cultural rights; they are expanding towards a new generation of rights.
Eventually, what makes the difference between this practice of human rights and the human rights city is, quite simply, the city. What many chapters of this book offer are digressions from the dominant practice and elements of a practice of human rights redefined around the city and primarily, but not exclusively, in the city. What I wish to emphasise here is a sense of agency and the possibility that the production of new meaning of human rights is instigated by the relation of proximity between human rights and the city (Grigolo Reference Grigolo2010 and Reference Grigolo, Hynes, Lamb, Short and Waites2011; see also Darling's notion of the urbanisation in this volume). At the same time, it must be clear that the human rights city is contended by different actors and discourses, as different actors understand, interpret, justify and promote the relation between human rights and the city in different ways. These actors ‘struggle’ with the city in order to make sense of it from a human rights viewpoint. In many respects, these actors also ‘struggle’ (with uneven power) to impose their version of human rights on other actors, driven by distinct interest in, and emotional attachments to, particular human rights and the form they should take in the city.
As this book shows and the next section will further elucidate, many of the actors involved in the human rights city are also the actors that dominate the field of human rights and are not necessarily located inside the city. At the same time, the human rights city is primarily the outcome of the engagement with human rights of civil society and local government actors, both inside and outside their city. They lead local projects about human rights and much of what they export about the human rights city is itself a reflection of their own practice. Still, many chapters of this book remain fundamentally concerned with how the local government engages with human rights and/or, from a normative viewpoint, should engage. In this respect, two types of local government engagements with human rights are highlighted in this volume, which in the practice of the human rights city are often intertwined. One regards the mobilisation of discourse and claims about the human rights city, including the human rights of cities, through which actors inside local governments aim to establish their own vision and meaning of the human rights city.
The other regards the institutionalisation of human rights within the local government. It is within processes of institutionalisation that we can see what the grand statements embraced and promoted by cities produce at the implementation level. From a sociological angle, the point here is to understand ‘what are the means whereby a claim moves from the initial engagement with a rights issue, through the process of garnering support, to formal recognition and finally institutionalisation’ (Morris Reference Morris and Morris2006: 242). At this level, mayors may matter less than those city employees and bureaucrats involved in the ‘messy realities of interpretation and implementation’ (Hynes et al. Reference Hynes, Lamb, Short and Waites2010: 813). Needless to say, this is a crucial level if we want to understand the capacity of particular discourses to generate the kind of action and intervention that they prefigure and prescribe.
Many chapters of this book cast different lights on the engagement of the local government with human rights. While the authors in this volume tend to view it in a positive way, they nevertheless suggest that it also poses a number of ‘challenges’. These challenges evoke the paradox whereby public powers are at the same time guarantors and violators of human rights. From the sociological angle, the question is often the manipulation and domestication of human rights by public authorities at the level of meaning, for purposes that are at odd with their universal and egalitarian aspirations, for example, justifying war. As Stammers (Reference Stammers2009) notes, institutionalisation is the more or less implicit and somewhat necessary horizon of any process of mobilisation of human rights. However, it is a process that tends to constrain more emancipatory and social movement-driven notions of human rights. Ruzza (Reference Ruzza and Morris2006) shows that while human rights are increasingly popular also among politicians and bureaucrats, especially on the progressive side of the political spectrum, institutionalisation often implies that ideas oriented towards emancipation, for example, anti-racism, are redefined within particular organisational cultures in ways that leave activists at best only partly satisfied.
In this respect, what we need to consider in the case of cities is also the broader social and economic structure within which human rights are produced nowadays: a capitalist society and neo-liberal economy which, to differing degrees of intensity, are becoming as global as the idea of human rights. This structure poses crucial ‘limits’ and ‘dilemmas’ to cities and their local governments regarding the priority to be given to certain agendas, particularly the economic one (Keating Reference Keating1991; Peterson Reference Peterson1981, but see also Graham et al. in this volume). As the organisation of the state government is discursively replaced by the multi-level governance of a number of issues that are often recast as urban (Le Galès Reference Le Galès2002), ‘urban governance’ becomes the tool for governing territory and the local government is encouraged to play the role of a mediator between the interests of different stakeholders in particular policy areas. What are (perceived as) powerful economic priorities, however, are hardly neglected by local governments, especially when core urban issues such as planning and development are at stake. In this picture, the human rights city and the neo-liberal city are in a relation of competition and collateralism. In this kind of city, ‘human rights’ may be constructed both in conjunction with and in opposition, to issues such as ‘migration’, ‘security’, ‘social policy’ and, last but not least, ‘development’. These issues are more explicitly raised by authors addressing the right to the city (García Chueca, Darling, Starl and Sánchez Rodríguez in this volume) and throw up the question of the extent to which human rights can offer a site of resistance to the interest of economic actors in the city.
In this picture, the law plays a crucial part, beginning from the obvious fact that historically the law has been the privileged site for negotiating rights and their meaning. Several contributions to this book (see in particular Davis, Starl and Pestova) highlight the legal dimension of the human rights city and how it combines with political commitment and engagement. From a legal and socio-legal viewpoint it is possible to think of the city as a ‘level’ and ‘context’ of human rights implementation (Grigolo Reference Grigolo2010: 897; Grigolo Reference Grigolo, Hynes, Lamb, Short and Waites2011a): the city is embedded in a vertical and hierarchical system of legal relations (see also Oomen and and Soohoo in this volume) while at the same time being the space where the laws of these levels (including the law of the city) converge to regulate particular issues and groups. It is from this dual perspective that the relation between the city and the law of human rights, as well as the extent to which the latter is a constraint or an opportunity for the former (the question of ‘legalisation’ evoked by Darling in this volume), need to be understood and analysed. From a sociological perspective fully aware of the importance of the law, the question becomes how in particular local human rights institutions employ rights discourses and legal strategies to intervene on particular issues, and the extent to which these processes are aimed at emancipating or disciplining individuals and particular groups of people.
What we have said so far has important implications for understanding the kind of justice that the human rights city delivers. In fact, justice itself is a social construction, generated by the practice. Justice is defined and substantiated out of the interplay of different goals and meanings engaged in the human rights city and the extent to which human rights guide urban life as opposed to, but also often in an ambiguous relation with, other principles. The social and economic structure as well as cultural environments within which the human rights city is produced have important consequences for the kind of ‘injustice’ that exists in today's cities, with different issues emerging in particular cities at the centre and periphery of capitalism. The kind of justice human rights can deliver depends on the way in which different actors connect the ‘global’ and the ‘urban’: how human rights are mobilised, redefined and constructed strategically against the background of structural forces within the spaces of engagement, resistance and opposition available within the city and the local government. In the next section we begin to see in greater detail who these actors are and how they participate in the human rights city.
Making the human rights city
Like other practices of human rights, the human rights city can be understood sociologically as a process of collaboration and competition between different social actors and therefore, ultimately, a co-production, originated in the area of progressive politics. Human rights cities are mainly cities with progressive local traditions, politics and leadership, which human rights redefine in more globally intelligible terms. In this section I look at these actors, their interactions, and the crucial relation of co-production between civil society and local government.
What makes the human rights city is a web of formal and informal networks that include international and national governmental and non-governmental organisations as well as other cities, as shown in different chapters in this volume. These networks operate, in a sense, as a structuring force on local actors that (wish to) do human rights, reinforcing and promoting existing practices; however, to the extent that they stimulate reflections on, and diffuse, new practices, they are also sites of agency and new engagements.
The net result is both an increased visibility of human rights cities inside the field of human rights and also the overlapping between initiatives and networks. And yet, actors in this network do have different ideas of what human rights cities and local government engagements should look like. In fact, these actors end up in a sort of competition to have cities engage with human rights in certain ways. Researchers (including those who are contributing to this volume and constructing the human rights city from their own disciplinary perspectives) and their academic departments, practitioners, activists and more general ‘experts’ may have a notion of human rights city which is tied to their particular experience (as researchers and practitioners) and locality, more than the necessarily abstract formulas and standardised plans promoted by international organisations.
Moreover, international organisations do intervene in the human rights city conversation in the pursuit of their own mandate and supporting a concept of human rights influenced by their own organisational (often legal) culture. More generally, international governmental organisations proactively seek to have cities participate in the multi-level governance of particular rights that fall within their own mandate, as cities are perceived as crucial allies for the pursuit of that right and mandate. For example, UNESCO's and US mayors’ plans against racism (see Starl and Kamuf Ward in this volume) can be understood in the context of ‘geopolitical events’ that have emphasised the connection between anti-racism and urban policy (Ruzza Reference Ruzza and Morris2006: 115). At the same time, these international actors remain concerned about incorporating cities into a practice of human rights that is still very much centred on the state and the law. The joined-up governance project and tool-kit promoted by the Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union is an example of this. Local governments, in turn, may be more than happy to collaborate in this kind of project and may see collaboration with international organisation as an opportunity to position themselves in international political arenas and economic markets (Immler and Sakkers Reference Immler and Sakkers2014).
As typical of the broader practice of human rights, civil society actors play a crucial role in the generation and diffusion of new ideas about doing human rights in cities and, in some countries, ‘bringing human rights home’ (Soohoo, Albisa and Davis Reference Soohoo and Stolz2008; Oomen Reference Oomen2014). They can emphasise the importance of cities within a process that continues to focus mainly on the state, such as peace building (Smith Reference Smith2015). However, it is important to remain aware of the differences that exist between these actors and of the fact that these differences can enrich but also undermine their actions and campaigns (Merry et al. Reference Merry, Levitt, Rosen, Serban and Yoon2010). PDHRE's Human Rights Cities program emphasises the importance of building a constituency for the human rights city more than the commitment of the local government. Amnesty International is historically more inclined towards institutional politics. Activist lawyers may be sceptical of engagements that are not backed by a procedure that secures accountability and justiciability (see Davis and Frate in this volume).
Initiatives that promote a shift of human rights practice, however, have also received fundamental contributions from local governments. The European Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights in the City (ECHRC) is an obvious example (see Grigolo Reference Grigolo2009: 118–133 and Oomen, García Chueca and Kamuf Ward in this volume). Some local governments and mayors engage more proactively than others and come to exercise a more visible influence on the practice of other cities. The role played by the Barcelona government at the transnational and regional level is captured well by García Chueca in this volume.
Within this broad transfer of knowledge, however, what drives the process of making human rights in individual cities is a relation of co-production, marked by collaboration and competition, between civil society and local government. A starting point for thinking about this is Van den Berg's distinction in this volume between bottom-up and top-down approaches. This distinction aims to capture the centrality of civil society (bottom-up) or the local government (top-down) in any human rights initiative in the city. However, Van den Berg herself finds it difficult to unravel who does what in the human rights city. This challenge is often due to the dense quality of the political and social relations inside the progressive milieus within which human rights are built (in cities and increasingly transnationally). Whether the initiative starts from civil society or the local government, however, one will usually see that, at some point, actors in either or both camps will seek each other's engagement, as they all become interested in opening a space of institutionalisation of human rights within the local government.
It should be clear that once human rights start a process of institutionalisation, the local government will acquire a stronger control over them. In this space of institutionalisation certain actors more or less inclined towards ‘collaborative activism’ (see Van den Berg in this volume) can try to push and negotiate more or less particular notions of human rights. And yet, we can say along with Ruzza (Reference Ruzza and Morris2006), that the process of defining and articulating a certain notion of human rights will inevitably be influenced not only by the interests and visions of the local government, but also its more or less progressive organisational culture. The argument could be made, based on previous research and this book, that local governments appropriate and use human rights from the viewpoint of how much they enhance their capacity to govern the city (Grigolo Reference Grigolo2010; see also Kamuf Ward in this volume). This approach to human rights explains why especially progressive local governments may take the opportunity offered by human rights to open a channel of communication with local civil society, establishing forms of collaboration that may not be immune to the classical co-option taking place in any process of institutionalisation (see Stammers Reference Stammers2009).
In the end, we can suggest that due to the co-production between civil society and local government, a relation and tension is built (also) into the human rights city between, on the one hand, the imperative of ‘justice’, to which civil society concerned about human rights may be more sensitive, and on the other, the logics and constraints of ‘government’ (including ‘governance’) that guide the local government and necessarily inform any process of institutionalisation. This tension can obviously be solved in context, reaching different compromises between justice and government. Yet these compromises will obviously be somewhat unstable, especially when implicit limits the actors involved consider non-negotiable are surpassed. For example, when constraints of institutional politics are disrespected, the local governments and mayors in particular, may step back.
In the next section we explore further the tension between justice and government, looking into the differences and continuities between human rights and the right to the city.
The human rights city and the right to the city
A number of authors in this volume address and problematise the relation between the human rights city and the right to the city. In this section, I argue that while in principle the human rights city and the right to the city are distinct practices, they are also collateral to the extent that are both produced out of certain readings of the relation between human rights and the city and they actually discursively engage one with the other, suggesting the possibility of a combination between the practices.
As a starting point, the argument can be made that the human rights city and the right to the city are practices different one from the other.
The question of the difference should, in my opinion, be explained by the fact that we are talking here of different kinds of rights informing the two practices and how these rights speak differently to issues of government and justice. The basic distinction is that between human rights and the right to the city, not the human rights city and the right to the city. Human rights, whether of the state or of the city, are built on the fundamental discursive premises that ‘government’ is responsible for delivering human rights, which implies that government exercises control over justice. Delivery of justice takes place in the context of the relation between government as the duty bearer and people as rights holders around a variety of issues/rights.
In the human rights city, government continues to be central, albeit to differing extents depending on the initiative. Government is definitely more central in the ECHRC and the Montréal Charter of Rights and Responsibilities than PDHRE's Human Rights City. This has to do also with ‘charters’ being initiatives heavily sponsored by municipalities, as opposed to PDHRE's Human Rights Cities.Footnote 2 In the charters the replacement of the state with the local government is more evident and is sustained by legal discourse. By imitating the language and form in which human rights are produced in the international human rights regime, the local government suggests that the actor that should be addressed by that regime and around which the practice of human rights should be centred is the local government. By replacing the state in that the international human rights regime, local governments carve out their own space in that regime and ‘steal the show’ from the state. They do it, it should be clear, in a way that gives them all the symbolic advantages without the burden of being primarily responsible to deliver human rights.
With that said, it is significant that much new human rights meaning generated by the human rights city revolves around the space, use, activities and inhabitants of the city, in ways that continuously evoke the right to the city, its conceptualisation in the literature and its practice (see Sánchez Rodríguez in this volume; Purcell Reference Purcell2002). Article I of the ECHRC (UCLG 2012) actually provides for the right to the city. Human rights further incorporate the right to the city in its universal and egalitarian aspirations in article II of the ECHRC, which provides that the ‘Principle of Equality of Rights and Non-Discrimination’ for all the ‘inhabitants’ of the city. Both the ECHRC and the Montréal Charter, then, provide for urban rights of a third generation type, focused on post-materialist issues such as environment and the more general quality of life in the city. As García Chueca and Frate show in their chapters, both charters provide for the same rights to ‘leisure’ and ‘development’, although development is also ‘harmonious’ (in the ECHRC) and ‘sustainable’ (in the Montréal Charter). Other rights concern ‘movement’, ‘tranquility’, ‘mobility’ (García Chueca), and ‘sports’, ‘security’ and ‘high quality municipal services’ (Frate).
More classical rights are not missing, at the same time being redefined from the viewpoint of local government competences and priorities. Emphasis is placed on economic, social and cultural rights, which send a message of ‘social’ as opposed to purely ‘liberal’ justice. Some rights evoke the right to the city in a more straightforward manner. Frate and Neubeck present the right to housing in Montréal and Eugene, respectively, as somewhat compensating for the lack of a state recognition of this right. Another example provided by Frate is the recognition in the Montréal Charter of the right to water, before the same right was recognised as a human right also by Canada (see also Pestova in this volume), hinting at the centrality of local governments in the preservation and promotion of the commons and the relation between the commons and human rights (Chiu Reference Chiu2013; Fantini Reference Fantini2012).
This does not imply, of course, that one practice mirrors the other. The right to the city maintains a connection with more radical social movements that is fairly absent in the mainstream of the human rights city practice. To the extent that the local government and its engagement with human rights remains central but is also perceived as fundamental in the human rights city camp, the human rights city itself will tend to be a matter of negotiating rights and accepting compromises with the local government about the kind of justice it delivers. The right to the city, at least in the way in which it is formulated and produced in Mexico City (Sánchez Rodríguez in this volume) does not exclude human rights from the picture. However, by introducing the notion of the ‘social function’ of property, the Mexico City Charter tends to isolate the provision of human rights, especially those of a more urban and spatial quality, and the right to housing, from a purely liberal notion of right to property.
In a sense, in the right to the city, ‘justice’ comes before ‘government’, putting government action and its human rights, in the perspective of delivering a certain justice: preserving the collective nature and quality of the city space, and putting local residents and their needs and uses vis-à-vis the space of the city, at the centre of the city and human rights. Eventually, this should be achieved through forms of participation, around in particular planning and housing, that are not pre-empted by powerful economic interests, such as planning and housing. More than mainstream notions of urban governance, or non-binding forms of consultation such as those provided by the Montréal Charter, we are talking here of projects for the city aimed at ‘empowering democracy’ (Fung and Olin Wright Reference Fung and Olin Wright2003) or, from a more antagonist perspective, ‘recapturing democracy’ (Purcell Reference Purcell2008).
Eventually, what distinguishes the two practices may be the way in which they not only read human rights through the city but also the other way around: how cities are redefined through human rights, and the kind of discourse about the city that human rights sustain. The production of new meaning of human rights goes together with the production of new meaning of the city. The image of the city sustained by human rights charters is of progressivism and tolerance, of a place where it is desirable and safe to live and is secured by a local government. This human rights discourse on the city will be resisted from a right to the city viewpoint to the extent that it conceals and contradicts the social, political and economic reality of the city. It will be contested to the extent that it is a brand and itself the product of the kind of neo-liberal city that activists contest, part of that ‘moral urbanism’ that Darling discusses in this volume.
Despite the core differences between the practices of the human rights city and the right to the city, the constructionist viewpoint advocated here warns against the risk of essentialising and reifying of these two practices. It leaves open the possibility of a kind of ‘constructive reconstruction’ and strategic resistance in between the two practices to the extent that the social forces that sustain the human rights city and the right to the city, inside and outside the local government, may well share the common social, political and legal space of the city and sometimes the same vision of a just city. On such premises alliances should be forged capable of mobilising the discourse and law of human rights in ways that are more strategically oriented towards justice. Seen from this perspective, the chances of success and failure may be less due to the inherent differences between the human rights and the right to the city than the broader social and economic structures in which these practices are developed. From this angle, it becomes relevant where either practice, or a combination of them, is located in the geography of neoliberal capitalism, the power of civil society to promote a ‘more progressive’ vision of and agenda for the city and the degree to which the local government is sensitive to and receptive of this agenda.
The human rights institutions of the city
The question of implementation that many chapters of this book deal with has to be recast from the viewpoint of the definition of human rights city adopted here, as action undertaken to diffuse and impose human rights as the regulatory principles and norms of the city, inside and outside the local government. This process is sustained by a variety of institutions which are sometimes named and provided for in the charters, motions and statements that define the human rights city. The human rights institutions of the city comprise the procedures and organisations that are expected to place human rights at the centre of the social and political life of the city. In this section I try to show how this process is again influenced by the dominant practice of human rights while also revising that practice. As part of this process, I will also show that new meaning of human rights is generated and reinforced along the different trajectories towards which human rights are pushed. Finally, this section exposes some limits to the diffusion of the human rights city and the right to the city, while suggesting that the law can support the development of both practices in particular cities.
Different chapters in this book show that there is often a dedicated human rights body behind any process that supports the diffusion of human rights in the city. Examples in this book include the Municipal Human Rights Council in Graz (see Starl in this volume), the Human Rights Commission in Eugene (see Neubeck in this volume), the Human Rights Commission in Mexico City (see Sánchez Rodriguez in this volume) and the Ombudsman in Montréal These bodies clearly operate from within the local government, or in association with it, in order to perform a variety of functions which can be grouped under two broad lines of actions: (1) educating people on human rights in general (through conferences, human rights days, etc.) or specific training (to local government staff, students, workers, etc.) and (2) remedying what are seen and categorised as threats to human rights, via interventions on particular cases or complaints, relying on different legal powers and competences. These bodies operate with methodologies typical of the practice and a classical liberal approach to human rights.
Dedicated bodies, for example, commissions as well as committees and task forces, can also support particular initiatives related to the mainstreaming of one or more human rights within the local government, with a mandate to coordinate the mainstreaming of human rights across different departments and policy sectors. The mainstreaming approach has been imported from gender policy and has been experimented with some success in San Francisco's implementation of its CEDAW ordinance (Lozner Reference Lozner2004). A similar approach can be found in Eugene and is sustained by the Human Rights Commission. As Neubeck in this volume shows, the scope of this kind of intervention is to change the organisational cultures inside the local government and particular city departments.
Not surprisingly, the institutional infrastructure of the right to the city seems more complex and less immediately recognisable in pre-existing models. Sánchez Rodríguez in this volume shows how the ‘Full exercise of human rights’ in the right to the city envisioned in Mexico City is only one of the six ‘foundations’ of the right to the city, and how the Human Rights Commission of Mexico City is clearly part of the right to the city. Human rights, however, share the space with ‘the sustainable and responsible management of the commons’ and the overall ‘democratic’ quality of the city, which includes its ‘management’. These foundations combine in turn with six ‘principles’ to sustain the right to the city. The right to the city itself is a ‘construction’, out of ‘effective and extensive participation’. In line with Sánchez Rodríguez's premise that the right to the city is a construction, the practice of the right to the city seems organised in a way that leaves open the possibility of different trajectories.
There are at least two important lessons one can extract from looking into these institutions and their work. One is that they are involved in the production of new meaning of human rights, and by that I mean human rights beyond those formally enunciated and proclaimed in official statements and laws. There exists a micro-level of construction and reconstruction of human rights, where city employees and bureaucrats’ own engagement with human rights does not simply ‘implement’ or ‘translate’ the officially recognised human rights of the statements. City employees re-work and redefine human rights in the context of their daily activities and the concrete issues they have to deal with and the kind of ‘discretion’ (Lipsky Reference Lipsky2010) that they exercise in the conduct of their operations. Ife (Reference Ife2012: 204–214) argues, for example, that social workers construct human rights in ways that are both deductive but also inductive: they are driven by the idea of complying with human rights and often at the same time engage human rights discursively in the framing and solution of a concrete situation. The city then is also involved in the production of this meaning, but at a level of the practice of city employees and the many decision they take on which policy implementation is fundamentally dependent on. Of course, there is no guarantee that these employee interventions are always desirable or in line with established human rights standards. City employees can make decisions and allocate resources in ways that reinforce, for example racism in the field of housing (Sala Pala Reference Sala Pala2010).
This book presents evidence of this micro-level construction of meaning and the context in which this is generated. Bodies that treat complaints, for example, are pushed into dealing with cases that may not have direct implications for the kind of human rights mandate that inform their mandate. The Montréal OmbudsmanFootnote 3 acknowledges that of the many topics raised by the complaints she receives on a regular basis ‘very few requests are “purely Charter” files’ (see Frate in this volume). In fact, many topics concern issues she was already dealing with under the bylaw regulating the activities and competences of the Ombudsman. And yet, by becoming part of human rights implementation, the scope of the Charter, its human rights and the work of the Ombudsman will tend to be stretched in an effort to comprehend and deal with these issues. The study of complaints of the Barcelona Office for Non-Discrimination reveals a similar stretching of meaning driven by the practice, for example, in relation to the rights of migrants (Grigolo Reference Grigolo2010).
One more or less explicit scope of any mainstreaming of human rights, then, is precisely about controlling the use of human rights by city employees and the deductive and inductive dynamics involved. There are obvious tensions here between, on the one hand, controlling meaning in order to make sure that it does not deviate from some content (lawyers may be especially concerned about safeguarding the legal content of human rights, hence the warning coming from Frate in this volume about avoiding ‘creative interpretations’ of human rights); and, on the other, encouraging new meaning that can help make sense of particular situations (hence the invitation coming from the case of Eugene presented by Neubeck in this volume, ‘to think outside of the box’). Both dynamics are actually involved in the mainstreaming of human rights in Eugene, a city where the diffusion of a human rights culture may be more difficult than in other places due to the US exceptionalism in human rights. In this respect, Neubeck emphasises the importance of ‘translators’ within the local administration and how the application and production of human rights is both encouraged and monitored, across different departments and in relation to particular issues.
The second lesson regards the power that human rights have to actually regulate and guide the city. Different chapters of the book suggest how the structure of the city and its politics can limit the capacity of human rights and the right to the city to impose themselves in the city. So, while the Ombudsman in Montréal deals with many issues, recommendations that the police should fall within the legal reach of the Ombudsman have not been followed up (see Frate in this volume). In Eugene some action has been taken to recognise and implement the right to housing and shelter; however, the City Council has left the criminalisation of homelessness untouched and the solutions provided have been ‘limited’ (see Neubeck in this volume). Finally, in Mexico City, while the Charter for the Right to the City has triggered a process of participation and consensus building involving a variety of actors, this has not impeded the eviction of people from one to another area of the city to make space for the highway project (the Supervía), and the movements that have supported the Charter are now acting towards making it legally enforceable.
An interesting association is made in these three examples between the limits of the human rights city and the right to the city, how these are generated by the prioritisation in local politics of other agendas and principles, and the invocation of the law as an ally towards reinforcing human rights and the right to the city. What is invoked here is the support of the law towards expanding the scope and reach of human rights and the right to the city, while protecting their core content by ‘isolating’ it from politics. Of course, it seems reasonable to think that it is politics itself that in all cases has kept the law out of the picture. The three examples then raise the obvious question of the role of the law in the co-production of the human rights city and the right to the city and the extent to which their practice should be legalised, in a way that is enabling and not constraining, particularly of discourse. This is, again, a question that has no easy solution, and needs to be solved in and by the practice.
Conclusion: for a sociology of the human rights city
Sociology can help cast a light on the different ways in which cities engage the idea of human rights by focusing on the urban practice of these rights and how in this practice human rights acquire meaning and this meaning come to guide urban life. This notion of the human rights city is quite broad and potentially inclusive of a variety of cities, including those who engaged with human rights before a more organised movement of ‘human rights cities’ emerged. It is a notion that does not preclude the more socio-legal investigation of how international human rights are applied by local government (see Oomen in this volume), while refocusing attention on the city as a context in which human rights and their practice is reconstructed (see Graham et al. in this volume) and, as part of this process, human rights are ‘urbanised’ (see Darling in this volume). Equally open is the possibility that the human rights city might also be about the right to the city, as human rights and the right to the city become connected in practice. In fact, what this chapter suggests is that the right to the city itself is, for some, a human right, and this may be the area in which cities are innovating most in the broader practice of human rights. An interesting question will be, then, the extent to which the right to the city will be accepted as a human right in the general practice.
Seen as a practice, we come to realise that there is no inherently true or good human rights city and that meaning depends on who has the power to define and lead the human rights city. In this respect, there are also ethical issues involved in the human rights city, raised by the more general tension between application and inclusion in the practice of human rights (on this see also Goodhart Reference Goodhart2008). These issues call into question how actors handle the power that the discourse of human rights gives them: their own assumptions about the meaning of human rights, the extent to which human rights empower and discipline especially those who seem to need them most, how the law supports both empowerment and discipline, and the fact that other local actors may be critical of human rights and eventually prefer alternative patterns towards justice.Footnote 4 These issues should then be considered in the light of the institutional support that the local government provides to the city: how justice and government are balanced one against the other, which impact on what meaning human rights require in the city.
As practice, the inherently political character of the human rights city is exposed, forcing its consideration and analysis within the broader social structure that mediates between the discourse and practice of the human rights city. The question then becomes understanding the broader set of constraints and opportunities within which the urban practice of human rights emerge in different cities of the world, and the extent to which the ‘proximity’ of cities to the everyday life of human rights can generate a practice of resistance to the harshest forms of neo-liberal domination in the city. For this reason it is important to keep an eye on how human rights are constructed, not only in city charters and statements but also, and eventually most importantly, at the level of the work and engagement of the human rights institutions of the city. Equally important is how the law is engaged in the process, with an understanding that powerful actors inside the local government will be more interested in using it against anybody but itself. On the way, actors, especially those more concerned with justice than government, outside and inside government, should remain vigilant as to the compromises that the social, political and economic forces that shape the city will make inevitable. Any negotiation of human rights in the city, including of their own use, should be considered as strategically related to the broader project of the human rights city. Any compromise should be accepted with an understanding of its relation with, and impact on, the local and broader practice of the human rights city.
