Human Rights City


A Human Rights City is a municipality that refers explicitly to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards and/or law in their policies, statements, and programs. Analysts have observed growing numbers of such cities since 2000. The Human Rights City initiative emerged from the global human rights movement, and it reflects efforts of activist groups to improve respect for human rights principles by governments and other powerful actors who operate at the local or community level. Because of their focus on local contexts, Human Rights Cities tend to emphasize economic, social, and cultural rights as they affect the lives of residents of cities and other communities and their ability to enjoy civil and political human rights.
Human rights advocates describe a Human Rights City as “One whose residents and local authorities, through learning about the relevance of human rights to their daily lives, join in ongoing learning, discussions, systematic analysis and critical thinking at the community level, to pursue a creative exchange of ideas and the joint planning of actions to realize their economic, social, political, civil and cultural human rights.” Human rights cities were defined at the 2011 World Human Rights Cities Forum of Gwangju as "both a local community and a socio-political process in a local context where human rights play a key role as fundamental values and guiding principles." This framework has generated various practices in different cities.

History of the Human Rights Cities movement

The Human Rights City initiative is the result of long-standing efforts of popular groups to defend and promote human rights, and thus represents an aspect of global human rights struggles.

Origins: From the Right to the City to the People’s Movement for Human Rights Learning

Contemporary human rights city initiatives grow directly from earlier organizing around rights claims in urban settings. The widespread nature of urban problems affecting people's everyday lives and survival have generated similar types of responses in places around the world, helping account for the simultaneous emergence and consolidation of popular claims to the “right to the city." According to David Harvey, “to invoke rights to the city means ‘to claim some kind of shaping power over the processes of urbanization, over the ways in which our cities are made and remade and to do so in a fundamental and radical way’."
Ideas inspiring this movement first emerged in the 1970s, with many influenced by Henri Lefebvre’s 1968 book, Le Droit à la ville. The movement has expanded and gained momentum around the world since the mid-1990s. The proliferation of global financial crises, urban austerity, and environmental damage has contributed to the rise of a growing number of cities around the world that are referring more explicitly to international human rights in their policies, statements, and programs.
The formally named “Human Rights Cities” initiative was launched by the People's Movement for Human Rights Learning, which was formerly known as People's Decade for Human Rights Education, in the wake of the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Austria. The initiative aims to mobilize people in communities to “pursue a community-wide dialogue and to launch actions to improve the life and security of women, men and children based on human rights norms and standards.” This approach is different from the traditional way that human rights are enforced and applied because of its emphasis on popular education, engagement, and culture as a necessary complement to government enforcement.
Human Rights Cities have grown in part because of the enhanced efforts by international agencies like UN Habitat to connect international legal regimes with municipal programs. As a result of globalized economic development processes, cities around the world are facing a similar host of urban problems, including a lack of affordable housing, traffic congestion and insufficient public services. Cities have looked to international forums like the UN Conferences on Human Settlements and the World Associations of Cities and Local Authorities to help address these problems. Shulamith Koenig, founder of the People's Movement for Human Rights Learning, worked closely with human rights organizers in some of the first formally designated human rights cities, including Rosario Argentina, which became the first Human Rights City in the world in 1997 and the first U.S.-based Human Rights City of Washington, D.C.

Human Rights Cities International Consolidation (1998 - today)

1998 would suppose a breakthrough for the human rights movement both in terms of institutional consolidation as well as global outreach. At the European level, the Barcelona Conference Cities for Human Rights gathered more than 400 local authorities uniting their voices and calling for stronger political acknowledgment as key actors in safeguarding human rights. The Conference process would culminate 2 years later in the French city of Saint Denis by the adoption of the European Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights in the City. By the same time, the movement of human rights cities was also taking ground in Asia, as regional civil society organizations were about to launch the Asia Human Rights Charter. Both charters would highlight the increasing role of local actors in promoting human rights as a way to reinforce local democracy and the place of human rights in the city in an increasingly urbanized world.
After the establishment of Rosario as the first Human Rights City back in 1997, other local authorities in South America effectively embraced the human rights-based approach by placing a special emphasis on its link with the notion of right to the city. In 2001, the City Statue of Brazil offered a renewed framework for promoting human rights and the social function of the city at a national scale. Mexico City is also among the pioneers in the development of the human rights cities notion: in the last decade, it has promoted the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City, created mechanisms to monitor human rights at the local level and adopted a new constitution specifically based on the human rights approach. The city of Bogotá was also at the forefront in the implementation of the human rights approach, with the implementation of the Bogotá Humana policy which took a specific emphasis on the rights of homeless people, women and elderly population.
In North America, Montreal was a regional pioneer with the establishment of its local Montreal Charter of Rights and Responsibilities. San Francisco has implemented policy translates and implements locally the rights of women as defined in the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women since 1998. Human rights organizers in United States have nonetheless faced particular challenges due to the role of the U.S. in the world and to the U.S. failure to ratify most major international human rights treaties. However, in the 2000s, more U.S.-based activists have been working to raise international awareness of U.S. human rights violations, including racial discrimination in the criminal justice system, economic human rights violations, and the rights of children. In 2014 residents of Detroit who were losing access to clean water brought their case to the United Nations, which sent a Special Rapporteur to the city and issued a statement condemning practices that inhibited residents’ right to water. This issue and others have encouraged more U.S. cities, including Baltimore Maryland, Mountain View California, Columbia South Carolina, to consider the human rights city model.
Throughout the last years, several examples around the world show a deepening on the concept and implications of human rights cities. In South Korea, Gwangju pioneered the establishment of a human rights municipal system that was quickly followed by cities such as Seoul and Busan. Gwangju has also been the main organizer of a World Human Rights Cities Forum that has gathered hundreds of human rights cities on a yearly basis. All around Europe, cities such as Barcelona, Madrid, Graz or Utrecht have established mechanisms to guarantee human rights and monitor their responsibilities under international human rights standards. Particular examples in this regard can be found in local government measures such as Barcelona's “City of Rights” programme or Madrid's “Strategic Plan for Human Rights Cities”.

Cities and international law

All international human rights law is based in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted in 1948. This document outlines the inalienable and fundamental rights of humankind that are protected regardless of gender, race, class, sexual orientation, religion, or any other social, economic, or political factor. The articles in the UDHR are not legally binding, but they are recognized as part of customary international law, and they authorize the development of binding international treaties, which countries may choose to sign and ratify. International human rights treaties and monitoring processes, however, privileges national governments and limits the role of local officials, whose cooperation in the implementation of international law is critical. The day-to-day work of implementing human rights standards often rests on the shoulders of local and regional authorities. They too are bound by these agreements. Local and regional authorities are often directly responsible for services related to health care, education, housing, water supply, environment, policing and also, in many cases, taxation.
How cities implement human rights ideals varies from city to city. This allows for each city to develop a plan that is specific to its capacities, needs, problems, and concerns. Formally designated “Human Rights Cities” typically create a leadership body made up of community activists, residents, and public officials working in partnership. Other cities may adopt human rights language and standards without officially adopting the name of Human Rights City. For instance, Barcelona is a leading human right city in Europe, and it created an Office of Non-Discrimination to implement the EU anti-racial discrimination policy within its borders as part of becoming a Human Rights City.
San Francisco is another such example, since its 1998 adoption of a city ordinance reflecting the principles of the Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women. The San Francisco example has helped shape work by activists organizing a “Cities for CEDAW” campaign to convince cities around the United States to implement the CEDAW convention despite the failure of the national government to ratify the treaty.

Human Rights Council on the "role of local governments in the promotion and the protection of human rights"

In the last years, the advance of the human rights cities movement has been assessed by several resolutions and statements of international organizations such as the Human Rights Council or the Council of Europe. A breakthrough in this regard was the adoption by the Human Rights Council of the Advisory Committee Report A/HRC/30/49 on the “Role of local governments in the promotion and the protection of human rights”. The report assessed local governments responsibilities in the light of international human rights law, but most importantly, emphasized the opportunities posed by the human rights cities movement in promoting and protecting human rights due to their close relation with the needs and aspirations of city inhabitants. The Report promoted local governments participation in the drafting of national human rights strategies, and called to secure the necessary powers and financial resources for local administration to be able to comply with their human rights responsibilities. It enshrined as best practices the initiatives of various local governments and promoted networking as a way to advance the human rights cities movement, including some examples and best practices such as the World Human Rights Cities Forum of Gwangju or the Global Charter-Agenda for Human Rights in the City.
The 2015 Report has received an intense follow up by the Human Rights Council constituency and other international and local governments organizations working for the advance of the human rights cities movement. As the world representative of local and regional governments, the UCLG Committee on Social Inclusion, Participatory Democracy and Human Rights has for instance presented various statements to the Council and shared the Report's recommendations among its constituency. In 2016, the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution “Recognizing the role of local government in the promotion and protection of human rights” and that “given its proximity to people and being at the grass-roots level, one of the important functions of local government is to provide public services that address local needs and priorities related to the realization of human rights at the local level”. On 2017, the same Council organized an intersessional panel discussion on the Report and the most recent advances in its implementation.

International networking and instruments

Work by international human rights activists and by policymakers in the United Nations has helped spread ideas about how city governments can improve human rights implementation. In 2004, UNESCO helped establish the International Coalition of Cities against Racism to help municipal leaders exchange ideas and improve policies to fight racism, discrimination, xenophobia and exclusion. The European Coalition of Cities against Racism grew out of that effort, and it now has more than 104 municipalities in its membership and has adopted a ten-point action plan.
In 2005, the UCLG Committee on Social Inclusion, Participatory Democracy and Human Rights was created in the framework of the largest organization and world representative of local governments: United Cities and Local Governments. The Committee represents and facilitates the exchange between worldwide local authorities having a strong agenda on human rights. As relevant outcomes of more than 10 years of work for advancing the notion and recognition of human rights cities, the Committee has been in charge of the follow-up of the European Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights in the City and has created and promoted the Global Charter Agenda for Human Rights in the City. It has also carried out a strong political advocacy at a UN level for the recognition of local governments as key actors in the promotion and protection of human rights, and co-organized yearly a World Human Rights Cities Forum.
Another relevant example in regards to concrete partnerships for advancing the human rights cities agenda are the so-called “action-research centers”. In this case, a local research center is generally at the forefront of mobilizing local authorities for the implementation of human rights at the local level. Relevant examples in this regard can be found at a European and North American levels. One of the most advanced examples on how can a local research center scale up and become a global actor in the promotion of the human rights agenda is the Raoul Wallenberg Institute. Although being affiliated to Lund University since 1984, the Institute's outreach has nonetheless gone beyond its local or even national level, as it now carries out projects in different regions of the world.

Current human rights cities

The following cities have been formally designated as Human Rights Cities:

Africa