A Tale of Two Cities: UN Promotes "Right to the City" as Key to "Rights in the City"
HUMAN RIGHTS, SOCIETY & CULTURE
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
In a policy document released in September 2008, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Management of Social Transformations (MOST) program applauded efforts of UNESCO and others to develop a “right to the city.” The document, entitled “Urban Policies and the Right to the City: Rights, Responsibilities and Citizenship,” analyzes the movement towards the right to the city, concluding that its call for government decentralization is necessary to ensure the establishment of “inclusive cities” that guarantee a “legal and policy framework in which equity and social justice can flourish.” Through the so-called “right to the city,” UN agencies would work in partnership with local government authorities to establish frameworks, laws and programs that would prioritize the realization of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights for all, regardless of prevailing state or national responsibilities, competencies and finances.
UNESCO’s MOST program was created to foster a relationship between policy-making and social science research. Through policy papers and an online forum, the program seeks to educate policy-makers in four broad network areas, including scientific networks, United Nations networks, advocacy networks and policy networks. Under the “policy networks” umbrella, MOST informs policy formulation in the area of “cooperation with local authorities.” The “Right to the City” document helps to achieve this goal.
As explained in the document, the “right to the city” must be differentiated from “rights in the city.” Whereas “rights in the city” grant specific rights to individuals, the “right to the city” provides a “vehicle for social inclusion,” whereby local governments are given ultimate responsibility for ensuring that all city inhabitants have equal access to the benefits of civic life. Indeed, MOST views the city as the player best able to empower individuals to claim the rights given them in various international agreements. Therefore, in the opinion of MOST officials, the city should be the primary decision-maker with regards to social justice policy, and there is a need to develop these policies “at the urban scale, rather than at the level of state or region.” This has significant global governance implications in regards to vaguely-defined economic, social and cultural rights, and poses an obvious threat to the sovereignty of national governments. The “right to the city” complements, but is distinct from, “rights in the city.” In essence, MOST officials believe that urban residents have a right to the city that guarantees their realization of rights in the city.
The Global Charter-Agenda for Human Rights in the City highlights nine rights that all municipalities must guarantee their inhabitants. The Global Charter-Agenda is currently being circulated for debate and comment. (For more information on the Global Charter-Agenda, please see these February 10th and July 21st Global Governance Watch® postings.) In turn, the MOST document focuses on how the “right to the city” can ensure the implementation of the Global Charter-Agenda. Specifically, the MOST document highlights the UNESCO UN-HABITAT project on “Urban Policies and the Right to the City: Rights, Responsibilities and Citizenship,” which, among other things, is “exploring new dimensions and different entry points [for human rights] at the city level,” rather than viewing them solely as a national issue.
The right to the city considers local governments as more capable than national governments when it comes to ensuring human rights and social justice for its citizens. By promoting the right to the city, MOST is suggesting that “rights in the city” can only be realized through local government authorities working in cooperation with the UN and NGOs, thereby usurping the sovereign right of national governments to develop their own solutions to these problems.
Jim Kelly is the President of Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., a public interest civil and human rights law firm based in Atlanta, Georgia. The opinions expressed herein are his own.
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