Human Rights Locally
By Tamar Ezer
An important part of the U.S. human rights story takes place at city level. In these troubling times, we continue to see innovative local initiatives.
I’m excited to share Local Futures: Human Rights Cities, an essay series authored by the Human Rights Cities Alliance (on whose Steering Committee I’m honored to serve) and published in Open Global Rights in English, French, and Spanish. Please also see a previous Human Rights at Home Law Profs Blog post on this series at “New Essay Series: Local Futures: Human Rights Cities.”
As the cover description explains, “This series spotlights the growing Human Rights Cities movement in North America — where cities are becoming frontline laboratories for human rights innovation and communities are leveraging international norms to confront inequality, reshape global rights discourse, and bring human rights home.”
Please find the following pieces:
- The rise of human rights cities introduces the series and discusses how cities are leading the way in advancing solutions to critical urban problems such as affordable housing and state preemption.
- Cities and the human right to housing explores how cities are working to advance the right to housing and fighting back against increasing housing insecurity and homelessness.
- A national human rights institution for the United States: Can cities lead the way? proposes that activists build a durable human rights apparatus from the ground up in the absence of national leadership.
- How global human rights can help cities challenge state preemption addresses how global human rights can help cities challenge state preemption.
- Building translocal movements for global racial justice discusses how the legacy of grassroots organizing by Black communities and allies offers a blueprint for local-global organizing that can advance racial and global justice.
- Reckoning with history and difference in municipal spaces examines how cities are using human rights to revisit their own stories.
- Local futures for human rights suggests that the future of human rights is local in the face of rising authoritarianism.
We hope you will find some inspiration and ideas!