The State of the City and the Future of Human Rights: A Review of Global Urban Justice

Abstract

As of 2014, fifty-four percent of the world’s population lived in cities; by 2050, this proportion is expected to rise to sixty-six percent. As a result, cities face tremendous and unique challenges in creating communities in which diverse populations can thrive. Corresponding with their renewed significance, cities have also begun to reimagine their individual and collective power on the national, regional, and international stage. As cities have become more visible, advocates have begun to focus on local governments as sites of rights protection, invoking universal international human rights norms as a source of authority for local policy and using human rights language as a tool for social mobilization. This localization of human rights is still a relatively new phenomenon. Now, however, as we approach the twentieth anniversary of the first human rights city, the time is ripe to take stock of the progress and potential. This volume of essays, edited by Barbara Oomen, Martha F. Davis, and Michele Grigolo, brings together an international and inter-disciplinary collection of authors to assess the state of human rights vis-a-vis the city. Through a mix of case studies and thematic essays on the localization of human rights on several continents, this volume provides a window into how human rights are playing out on the ground in local communities. This review draws on these case studies to consider whether cities are effective sites to enhance the relevance of human rights and, in particular, to examine whether efforts to name, claim, and implement rights at the city level can enhance accountability, make human rights relevant and real, and fill the gap left as the power of nation-states wanes.