Monday, June 24, 2019

The Meaning and Potential of Human Rights Cities

by Martha F. Davis, Northeastern School of Law

In 1831, the French diplomat and scientist Alexis de Toqueville, toured the United States and took extensive notes on social conditions, American culture, and American democracy.  Almost two centuries later, de Toqueville’s observations from his outsider perspective, published in the book Democracy in America, continue to illuminate the American experience.

Following in de Toqueville’s path, Michele Grigolo – an Italian scholar who teaches sociology in the U.K. – has recently published the book, The Human Rights City: New York, San Francisco, Barcelona.  While Grigolo’s focus is not exclusively on the U.S., his outsider stance in examining these three cities has the same impact as de Toqueville’s – through detailed observations combined with larger contextual insights, Grigolo teaches us things about our own culture and politics that we otherwise could not see.

The Human Rights Cities movement reflects a growing engagement by municipalities and city-level advocates in looking at the role of human rights in local policy and organizing.  The movement includes cities worldwide, including the U.S., yet the impetus for human rights cities seems to be strongest in Europe, with more cities and deeper engagement. 

Grigolo’s detailed examination of the ways in which human rights have been invoked in specific contexts in Barcelona, New York, and San Francisco help illuminate the deep-seated reasons for these differences.  Examining human rights in New York City, Grigolo digs into the history of New York's Human Rights Commission and its work on sexual orientation discrimination.  Like de Toqueville before him, Grigolo notes the American romance with litigation and legal frameworks – a trait that sets up a tension between civil rights and human rights approaches within the Commission and in the New York City political scene.  As LGBTQ advocates struggle for inclusion in the city’s existing civil rights protections, they sometimes find the added value of human rights difficult to articulate beyond its use as a rhetorical device.

In San Francisco, which adopted CEDAW as its municipal law, the connection between city policy and international human rights law is much more explicit.  At the same time, Grigolo’s interviews with key actors reveal that the original promoters of the city’s CEDAW ultimately concluded that the city’s implementation of CEDAW fell far short of its radical potential.  Yes, the pro-active focus on gender that the law required led to some greater awareness of gender-based burdens, particularly in the work-family arena, but deeper, structural reform and challenges to neo-liberalism were not part of the city’s agenda once the municipal government took over leadership of the CEDAW implementation.    

What, then, does the human rights framework offer to the city and its residents? 

Grigolo’s concluding chapter begins with a focus on the important role of the co-production of human rights in cities.  The human rights frame provides a platform for many agents in and around cities – activists, advocates, residents, city governments – to co-produce the meanings of justice, fairness, equality, and rights, for the community.  The human rights frame is a vehicle for institutionalizing these norms while also facilitating debate and active contestations.  Perhaps because it enters the conversation with less domestic “baggage” than civil rights, the human rights frame may be better suited to these conversations, especially in the U.S.

Grigolo also observes that cities affect human rights as well – “[a]s they enter the space and conversation of the city, . . . human rights are always in some ways reconstructed.”  He asserts with reference to the case studies outlined above, that “cities have emerged in this book as standpoints for questioning, challenging, and eventually expanding the rights recognized and protected by the state.”  This connection to human rights may give cities added power as they contest growing nationalism and racism at the nation state level. 

Finally, Grigolo examines the role of law in human rights cities – an issue that is particularly relevant in the U.S., with its overriding legal orientation.  As he notes, while law can be used to promote inclusion, “the law . . . remain[s] a divisive element in the urban practice of human rights.”  Human rights mainstreaming, for example, may be limited by lawyers’ perceptions of the need to integrate human rights into existing legal structures. 

Grigolo’s book ends with the thought that human rights cities have a special role to play in elevating voices from the periphery.  Human rights cities have the potential, he argues, to not only expand human rights, but to serve as “an active element in their development.”

By training an outsider lens on US human rights cities, Grigolo’s book lays out food for thought as well as ideas for action.  This is an important contribution to the emerging literature on local human rights, city spaces, and community activism.  Grigolo's insights on how human rights "plays" at the local level across cultures and sectors should inform both future scholars and human rights advocates.     

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/human_rights/2019/06/the-meaning-and-potential-of-human-rights-cities.html

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