Human rightscities

Soohoo, Cynthia

doi:10.1017/cbo9781316544792.015

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Second, different models have been set up in terms of local human rights practice. Soohoo (2016) distinguishes three potentially interrelated arrangements: the managerial model of human rights inclusion that focuses on nondiscriminatory municipal service delivery, typically with a focus on the needs of most vulnerable citizens; the internal monitoring model, in which a municipality assesses its own departments and policies in the light of human rights and nondiscrimination standards; and the participatory model which focuses on active citizen involvement, often including a human rights training and learning component for city staff and the public as a whole. Although these models have different advantages and disadvantages, they all run the risk of insufficient funding and institutional support because of the pressure of many other local funding priorities.…”

Section: From Norm Diffusion To Practice: Context-specific Engagement...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Women’s Rights Close to Home? The Miami-Dade County CEDAW Ordinance as Local Practice

Zwingel

2023

Pol & Gen

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Because of the United States’ minimal domestic engagement with human rights, several subnational initiatives, including the Cities for CEDAW campaign, have formed to infuse human rights into local policy making. Analyzing Miami-Dade County as one locale within the Cities for CEDAW network, this article asks what happens to human rights when they are turned into urban policies. Drawing on literature theorizing the complexities of urban human rights activism and using an interpretivist framework of analysis, the article reconstructs local context features and practices promoting gender equality through the countywide CEDAW ordinance. It develops a narrative based on expert interviews and finds an unusual actor constellation in which a local officeholder led the way rather than community activists. The practices identified work within institutional constraints and highlight data collection to support informed gender policy making. The findings lead to the conclusion that both activists and scholars should think beyond the dynamics of policy formulation and more explicitly about the complexities of implementation.

show abstract

Section: From Norm Diffusion To Practice: Context-specific Engagement...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Women’s Rights Close to Home? The Miami-Dade County CEDAW Ordinance as Local Practice

Zwingel

2023

Pol & Gen

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…30 Self-declared human rights cities try to develop new methods to generate human rights solutions and infuse these into their daily work of governance and service provision. 31 Three pillars are behind the human rights city concept: societal development, a culture of human rights, and urban justice. Societal development refers to the interaction between the individual and other members of the society in a spirit of solidarity for the achievement of the common good.…”

Section: Human Rights Cities: Concrete Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The new urban agenda and human rights cities: Interconnections between the global and the local

Silva

2018

Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As the level of governance closest to the city dwellers, local authorities have been called to play a protagonist role as implementers of global standards on human rights and sustainable development. The New Urban Agenda, a political declaration signed by all UN Member States, sets a human rights-based approach to policy-making and service delivery as a path towards inclusive and sustainable urban development. Remarkably, the document acknowledges that local authorities are responsible for protecting, respecting, fulfilling, and promoting the human rights of the inhabitants. However, gaps between the aspiring language of international commitments and their concrete impact on the ground have limited its potential to transform people’s lives. Nevertheless, all over the world human rights cities have pro-actively set the implementation of human rights as a core task in the municipality. By establishing practical links and synergies between human rights cities and the NUA, this paper suggests ways of filling implementation gaps, drawing a promising scenario for the realisation of both global and local agendas.

show abstract

“…In local contexts, engagements with human rights are often described as political choices. These choices relate to what rights to focus on in local human rights agendas and also how to organise local human rights initiatives (Soohoo, 2016;Oomen, 2016). In a similar vein, self-designated human rights cities are sometimes described as 'battlegrounds', where state and civil society actors compete and collaborate in the process of translating human rights to the local context (Grigolo, 2018).…”

Section: A Localised Understanding Of the Politics Of Human Rightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Considering that HRCs rely on a broad understanding of human rights as law, governance and discourse, it is not surprising that Nuremberg and Utrecht are at the forefront of debates about the 'symbolic surplus of human rights' (Verschraegen, 2018). Whilst scholars recognise challenges that HRCs face, human rights inflation, fatigue and populism are not listed among them (Soohoo, 2016;Davis, 2017;MacNaughton et al, 2020) leaders 'come back to haunt them?' (Sabchev, 2022).…”

Section: 'It Is Difficult Of Course You Have To Do It [Refer To the C...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…And yet… This article engages with scholarship that thinks through these shortcomings of HRCs. Much of this research investigates the implementation of human rights norms within municipal organisations (Soohoo 2016;McNaughton et al, 2020). These studies show how local human rights frameworks are institutionalised and 'picked up and used by grassroots groups to hold the city accountable for meeting its human rights obligations to the community' (Neubeck, 2016, p.254).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Unmoored, not Adrift

Miellet¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This dissertation explores the interplay between the politics of human rights and forced migration in several Dutch and German municipalities. It sought to answer the question of why and how municipal actors engage with human rights in the context of forced migration, and through which encounters and spaces human rights-based approaches to the reception and inclusion of forced migrants develop. To guide my inquiry into this twofold question, five sub-questions on themes running through the chapters of this dissertation were formulated. These five questions focus on municipal actors’ (1) motives for engaging with human rights, (2) their understandings of human rights, (3) their frames and strategies to legitimate municipal approaches in this area, (4) the spaces and encounters through which human-rights based responses develop (5) and the spaces through which their limits manifest. First of all, my PhD research shows that even in relatively hospitable environments, where international legal norms and principles are widely endorsed, municipal actors carefully weigh different strategies and navigate dilemmas when invoking human rights. They use human rights as a source of inspiration for local human-rights based approaches to the reception and inclusion of forced migrants and as a source of legitimation to justify local divergence from national policies. Secondly, I highlight how municipal actors have different understandings of the local relevance of human rights and responsibilities regarding forced migration. By focusing on institutional, rather than everyday settings, I tried to bring into focus how local engagements with human rights may centre on contesting understandings of human rights responsibilities and duty bearers, as opposed to rights holders and norm addressees (forced migrants). In the last two chapters of this thesis, I zoom in on how different (normative) understandings of arrival shape local efforts to develop rights-based approaches to the reception and inclusion of forced migrants. Third, this thesis points to different strategies to legitimate municipal involvement, and argues it is important to differentiate between discursive, discreet and discretionary strategies and to consider the implications of their application in different settings. Fourth, the thesis offers a spatially aware examination of the politics of human rights and forced migration, by examining how institutional settings and public spaces in cities, towns and rural municipalities, are more than simply a stage for encounters between forced migrants and municipal actors, because the functions, design and artefacts of these spaces also mould the local politics of human rights and forced migration. Fifth, this investigation brings into focus how municipal actors and other actors negotiate the limits of rights-based approaches to forced migration and zooms in on airports and asylum seeker centres as sites where the limits of municipal mandates and rights-based approaches are negotiated. To conclude, this thesis argues that exploring these five dimensions is essential to understanding the complexities of local human-rights based responses to forced migration and to developing a broad understanding of the local interplay between the politics of human rights and forced migration in these different German and Dutch localities.

show abstract

Human rightscities

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Women’s Rights Close to Home? The Miami-Dade County CEDAW Ordinance as Local Practice

Women’s Rights Close to Home? The Miami-Dade County CEDAW Ordinance as Local Practice

The new urban agenda and human rights cities: Interconnections between the global and the local

Unmoored, not Adrift

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About