A New Human Rights City: Good News from Jackson, Mississippi

What’s the good news?:  On December 16, 2014, the Jackson, Mississippi City Council unanimously passed a resolution to create a Human Rights Charter and Commission that will support Jackson becoming the first Human Rights City in the historic South.   Spurred by the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and others, supporters of the measure explained that “we plan to take a proactive approach to make Jackson a Human Rights City that respects, protects, and fulfills the human rights of all its inhabitants.”  At least one other southern city is contemplating a similar step, as the Mayor of Columbia, South Carolina announced his intention to create a Human Rights Commission in that city.

It will be exciting to see how Jackson activists proceed now that the formal mechanism to establish a human rights framework for the city is in place.  In addition to local activists, several national-level actors have provided support to the campaign, including the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative and the U.S. Human Rights Network.  This national network of supporters should be helpful as Jackson faces the hard work of actual human rights implementation going forward.  A number of U.S. cities have, like Jackson, adopted the Human Rights City moniker, including Washington, D.C.; Pittsburgh, PA; and Boston, MA.  However, many of them have found that human rights rhetoric is easier to sell than actual integration of human rights into local decisionmaking.  In that respect, international models may be more instructive than our domestic examples.  For instance, as previously described on this blog, Montreal has adopted an operative human rights framework that included creation of an ombudsperson tasked with bringing a human rights frame to bear on city-level issues.  Graz (Austria), Mexico City (Mexico), Utrecht (the Netherlands) and York (England), are also potential models.  In the U.S., San Francisco’s implementation of CEDAW shows one mode of implementing human rights at the local level, with the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women spearheading the city’s ongoing implementation efforts.

At a time when local governments are more and more important to the actualization of human rights worldwide, the good news is that Jackson has started down this road, apparently with committed activists on the ground, engagement of the local government, and good will from national human rights organizations.