Enhancing Quality of Life by Localizing Universal Human Rights

Background Information

The general objective of the initiative is to improve the quality of life of citizens by strengthening and anchoring a local human rights culture that protects human dignity.

The international inspiration for this local initiative is the set of human rights treaties ratified under the United Nations. A wide range of local policies have developed since the adaptation of this 'global moral order' in 2010—child rights agendas, LGTB policies, poverty relief programs, healthy urban living and air quality measures, the Shelter/Refugee City, anti-discrimination policies, free tap water in public spaces, accessibility for the disabled (Agenda22), participation (good-governance) laboratories, privacy protection programs and ombudsman facilities.

Goals of the Initiative

The following specific objectives can be distinguished:

First, the coalition aims to bring together many organizations to discover crossovers between different initiatives which would otherwise remain unexplored. By discovering crossovers, organizations learn what topics or integrated policy areas are most beneficial and effective to collaborate with related partners.

Second, the new partnerships improve local policies through complying more closely with human rights standards. Human rights thus function as the standard of quality for local policies. The coalition also translates international treaties into local contexts and policies. In this way, a contemporary interpretation is provided to the local human rights culture, making the human rights narrative tangible in the everyday life of the local society.

A third objective is to develop a joined national and international governance process in which knowledge, methods and strategies can be shared. This is established with regard to the question of how to develop a local strategy to enhance and guarantee people’s human rights at the local level to enhance the human rights culture. By collaborating with other cities and stakeholders, the local development of strategies is critically evaluated and reflected by global partners.

Parties and Partners to the Initiative

The innovation involves an innovative partnership. The partnership has a public-community-private structure. The leading partner and facilitator is the City of Utrecht, however, the coalition is increasingly horizontally structured with the city of Utrecht becoming more and more a member of the coalition like the others. Since the coalition is unique in the Netherlands, several national organizations, ministries, municipalities and institutes are supporting the initiative with the local partners.

The Local Human Rights Coalition is a network in which diverse civil society organizations are collaborating with the municipality and the university. Within the network we create opportunities to grow by giving people and organizations the chance to exchange, motivate each other and come up with new initiatives.

Although the Local Human Rights Coalition consists of many organizations, the core group consists of 14 people. In this core group, the municipality is also represented. The main task of this core group is to decide the focus points of action in the coming period. Besides their function of sounding and steering board, the core group is also continuously busy with including more active actors in the network and mobilizing organizations to be more conscious of the importance of local human rights.

Innovation for the Initiative

Revolutionary: 'Utrecht was the first Dutch city to take up human rights as a uniting frame' (Esther v.d. Berg, Making human rights the talk of the town, in: Global Urban Justice, p51. Cambridge University Press, 2016). Whereas in scientific literature a transition from old public administration and new public management towards public value management has been described extendedly, in practice this transition is seldom made in cities and other administrations. As the local human rights coalition functions exactly according to the public value model, however, the Utrecht approach is clearly front running and revolutionary in this respect.

Innovation has been applied in

The Local Human Rights Coalition can be seen as innovative in two ways:

First, the coalition brings about many new plans and innovative ideas. An even more innovative feature of the project is the way in which the network is structured, and the way in which the process is shaped and managed. The Local Human Rights Coalition in Utrecht is innovative in the sense that instead of approaching local human rights from a top-down juridical regime, it is approaching local human rights as a bottom-up cultural phenomenon.

Another very important feature that distinguishes the network from other local human rights policies is that within the coalition both the legitimating authorities as well as the operational capacity are active and present. It is not often the case that all three factors of legitimacy and support, operational capacity and public value are represented in one and the same network at the same time.

Obstacles and Solutions to the Innovation

In the Netherlands, there is a lack of knowledge about rights (although human rights in general are perceived as positive values) in addition to a tendency towards juridical reticence in the judicial system, and a pragmatic cooperative political practice aimed at reaching compromises. In the realm of citizenship, civic virtues and responsibilities prevail over the notion of rights. These circumstances account for a legal culture and a political practice in which rights play a minor role.

The national situation is reflected fully in the municipalities. Although cities are active in many social areas, these activities are never framed as human rights. The project is, therefore, about introducing a new universal narrative at the local level.

However, from the beginning the local human rights project was fully embraced by important politicians. Later, more and more members of the city council are now referring to human rights standards in relation to daily issues and new policy initiatives.

After a skeptical reception in the administration in the beginning, the higher administrative levels also started to see and realize that human rights could truly work as a frame to improve the quality of life for citizens. Because of the results achieved by the local human rights coalition, the created public value became visible, and is still actively convincing people within the new or even old public management context.

Outcomes and Assessments

We conducted a baseline measurement in order to examine if the coalition has indeed contributed to our main aim of establishing a local human rights culture. The survey focused on the attitudes of citizens towards human rights, the actions they are taking with reference to human rights and their opinions regarding human rights.

The coalition proved to be stable and independent of the political situation. Moreover, a great result of the work of the coalition are the initiatives of political parties put on the political agenda, proving that the civic coalition managed to raise awareness on the importance of local human rights. Another result is that awareness reached not only the local, but also the national level after a court case on the right of bed, bath and bread for undocumented refugees.

Concerning the objective of improving local policies, we started in 2010 to research policy areas and the degree to which they are related to local human rights. This research functioned as a starting point to areas the Local Human Rights Coalition should be directed to in order to improve local policies.

A final result is that the local coalition has undertaken an advisory role towards other cities, both national and international. At the national level, Amsterdam asked Utrecht for advice. At the international level, Utrecht was invited by Gwangju, Vienna and the European Commission to give presentations about Utrecht’s approach concerning the implementation of local human rights policies.

Methods Applied

Cultural Program - Vrede van Utrecht

Since the local human rights program (http://www.vredevanutrecht2013.nl/) has a cultural objective, much attention has been given to a cultural program that translates and supports the idea of a local human rights culture. A special program was developed for this purpose in 2013, focusing on local and international peacemaking inspired by the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Utrecht. In many cultural exhibitions, theatre and symposia, widespread attention was given to raise local awareness of the importance of human rights and the importance of recognizing human dignity.

Week of Local Democracy and Human Rights

To mobilize numerous local human rights organizations and bring them into contact with each other, Utrecht worked on an annual week of local democracy and human rights (an initiative of the Council of Europe) under the title of 'Human Rights: What about your backyard?'.

Local organizations opened their doors to the public and offered special meetings to inform the general public about their activities. The promotion of the program was centrally facilitated through a website, a widespread activity calendar and other means. Because of its innovative approach Utrecht earned the European title of a '12 Star City'.

Human Rights Cafe's

One of the objectives is to give a platform to organizations and actors to discover crossovers. An important feature of the process is to facilitate the emergence of the group and to create opportunities for organizations in the city to meet each other to extend the fundament for a local human rights culture. One way this is facilitated is by organizing a human rights cafes four times a year. These cafes are a great way for organizations to network and explore crossovers. No less than four hundred organizations are actively invited to the cafes, but of course they are accessible to all those interested.