Issues Home About Contact Us Issue 8 - December 2013 عربى
International Developments

“Right to the City”: A Global Dialogue for MENA

New paradigms of social production and enjoyment of human settlements have been the subject of social movement and civil society discourse in various countries of Latin America for the last 50 years. Urban reform and a “right to the city” are now present—explicitly or implicitly—in both theoretical and legal frameworks and, at once, are becoming a platform for change in other regions.

Global forums over the past 20 years also have provided important moments in the development of actors and the articulation of concrete proposals. Thousands of people from dozens of organizations and networks have since participated in the debating, preparing, signing and disseminating the World Charter for the Right to the City (defined as the equitable usufruct of cities within the principles of sustainability, democracy, equity and social justice). This Charter is now standard discussion in the global forums of UNESCO and UN Habitat.

In its geneses and social meaning, this instrument primarily aims at strengthening the processes and collective claims against injustice and social exclusion and discrimination in the urban space. In human rights terms, the Charter and its movement seek to contextualize and operationalize the obligations of the state to respect, protect and fulfill human rights locally through a set of binding principles. Applying human rights in cities also clarifies the subsidiary role of the city within the state, and calls upon state support to integrate the city into a wider human rights habitat.

Alongside the social processes toward realizing human rights governance at every level, some local, national and regional governments have sought to apply human rights in the urban context through legal instruments explicitly recognizing “the right to the city,” “human rights in the city,” the “human rights city” and/or “human rights habitat.” Among the most-advanced examples have been the European Charter of Human Rights in the City (2000), Brazil’s Statute of the City (2001), the Charter of Rights and Responsibilities of Montréal (2006), the Constitution of Ecuador (2008), the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City (2010), the Charter-Agenda for Human Rights in the City (2010) and the Charter of Human Rights Gwangju, South Korea (2012).

This year, the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) convened its 4th Congress in Rabat, Morocco (1–7 October 2013), with a focus on involving African local governments. HIC and its Housing and Land Rights Network joined with UCLG to organize a special event at Rabat on “The Right to the City: An International Dialogue for MENA.” The panel sought to exchange experiences from Asia, Latin American and MENA to advance the global discourse. It intended also to spark debate on the prospects of new relationships between civil society and local administration, and envision this dialectic process toward the development of local government in the region.

Moderating the panel discussion, Joseph Schechla (HIC-HLRN) posed questions to the panelists to draw out lessons for the MENA region. He asked the presenters to speak on factors that distinguish the success of efforts to develop the right to the city, or human rights in the city, however the concept is locally conceived.

Mr. Anselmo Lee (Korean Human Rights Foundation) and Mr. Claudio Sule Fernández (Ciudad Sur, Chile) recounted examples of how the scale of the urban entity, as well as the history of local struggle, shape the strategies, issues and techniques making up the local right-to-the-city agenda. In the case of Ciudad Sur, the Chilean cities that came together around a new consensus of participatory planning and governance were peripheral and smaller scale relative to the capital, Santiago. The municipalities also had functioning local governments, distinctly from Santiago, which maintains a centralized governmental structure, but with many local administrative units that do not function as local (participatory) governments. In the case of Gwanju, Korea, the participatory planning and legislation developed were community based, rather than citywide in scale, facilitating the participatory nature of the experience, while allowing for cross-referencing from oneneighborhood to another, and then scaling-up citywide.

Responding to questions about demographic factors emerging in good practice, the panelists reflected on class and ethnicity. They discussed the composition of communities on the urban periphery, many having a predominantly working-class demographic, as a potential factor enabling a specific local culture of political solidarity. Mr. Lee noted the presence of migration and ethnic minorities in populous Korean centers, like Gwanju, as a factor in raising principles of diversity and nondiscrimination in the normative definition of human rights most locally.

Ms. Halima Tijani, mayor of Roued, Tunisia, emphasized a set of prerequisites for realizing a right to the city in her country and region. These include (1) the means, including sufficient resources of all kinds, to ensure adequate services and public-administration competence; (2) political will of all stakeholders to participate in building the city together, and to devolve authorities locally in order to do so; (3) compatible legislation and a constitutional framework that allow for effective, participatory local government; and (4) civic education to prepare citizens, civil servants and officials for engagement in civic affairs in new ways. Madame Tijani added also the need for citizens to develop respect for each other and the commons, municipal property and local authority.

Lessons for the MENA region

The panel enabled the exchange of experiences and views from various stakeholders and regions to seek progress and face challenges in realizing the right to the MENA city. Since the notion of actual local government is new to the region, much more coordination of local stakeholders in MENA is needed to develop local and/or regional charters on the right to the city. However, the constitutional reform processes across the region provide a historic opportunity to extend concepts of the democratic state beyond the transitional fixation with central government and its institutions. (See: Habitat in the Egyptian Constitution in this issue of Land Times.)

Questions from the audience and views expressed from the panel identified some prospects for developing the right to the city in the MENA region. As Mr. Lee observed from Korea, the global public is vigilantly monitoring the events and developments arising from the so-called “Arab Spring” countries. Thus, despite setbacks in the democratic processes, the reservoir for global solidarity and exchange of experiences in developing local human rights-based governance remains, he affirmed.

Certain proposals from the panel will help stimulate the debate about a progressive urban agenda leading up to Habitat III (2016). These include: the requisite constitutional and legal order to enable autonomous local government within the enabling state; practical local-scale and scaling-up approaches, from local efforts to citywide programs; the role of the state in ensuring the needed resources of all kinds to ensure competent institutions, systems and personnel to meet city dwellers’ democratic expectations; civic education for public servants, officials and the general public on human rights-based governance.

The state context is essential to the right to the city experiment. The Latin American and South Korean examples showed that the right-to-the-city movements have coincided with transitions from central military rule. As a hangover of previous (or current) regimes—whether security states and/or monarchies—many MENA states do not allow for actual local government in their constitutions, legislation or in their practice.

The “transition” of MENA local government in the Arab Spring remains especially ambiguous. Despite constitutional iterations, the norm persists for local administrations only to manage services, with little autonomy or authority beyond the executive branch of central government or the military.

The question of resources also remains crucial to the success of local government that respects, protects and fulfills human rights. Greater public investment in municipal governance and participatory budgeting are means to build citizenship rights and responsibilities at local scale.

The normative trend in political culture is evolving to ensure that full citizenship is practiced locally. The right-to-the-city claim recognizes that the realization of civil, cultural, economic, political and social human rights is always a local task. Therefore, consistent with the right to the city movement, the human rights obligation of contemporary statecraft extends to every village and neighborhood.

Full report of “The Right to the City: An International Dialogue for MENA


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