Strengthening local human rights: with Utrecht in the lead

For all the justified concerns about the rule of law and human rights today, there are also inspiring elements and innovations. One is that of human rights cities, often defined as local communities and socio-political processes where human rights play a key role as fundamental values and guiding principles. The city of Utrecht was the first human rights city in the Netherlands and has, from the very start, partnered with Utrecht University (UU)  in strengthening local human rights. This blog describes the background to this human rights city movement and the focus of the RightsCities project at UU. The focus here lies on strengthening civil society participation within the human rights cities movement in the broadest sense of the word – an issue that is as important as it is challenging.

Utrecht as a human rights city

The city of Utrecht has long been a frontrunner in this human rights cities movement. Ever since the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay applauded the city – home to the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights  and the SIM human rights research center – as the first human rights city in the Netherlands, Utrecht has embraced this ambition and worked to translate it into practice. They have explored policy on how to work on issues such as homelessness, the position of the elderly, persons with disabilities and LGBTQI+ people in line with international human rights treaties. There is a long-standing human rights coalition and efforts to mainstream human rights into all urban policies. Not an easy commitment, as explicitly setting a high standard also means that the city will more often be held to it by its active civil society.

Nevertheless, the human rights city identity of Utrecht is increasingly making its mark. In October 2025, to give an example, the municipal council adopted two relevant motions. With the first, the municipal council called on the municipality to uphold human rights in purchasing goods. A second, more specific motion, concerned the condemnation of ‘sportswashing’,  and explicitly referred to the standards that a human rights city should uphold.

One aspect of Utrecht’s self-identification as a human rights city has, from the very beginning, been an engagement with like-minded cities and an effort to set up networks and learn from one another. In this, the municipality has partnered with the UU from the very start, for instance in a project on Dutch human rights cities and their best practices. The project, at the time, lead to the formation of the Dutch Association of Municipalities network on local human rights.

The UU as a research partner

A more recent example of joint initiatives by the municipality and UU to widen and strengthen the human rights cities movement is RIGHTCITIES, funded by the European Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values programme. Via this project, five established European human rights cities work together to explore how the rights and freedoms set out in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights can be made a bigger part of everyday decision-making in local communities.

On the UU side, our team consists of Sneh Aurora, a human rights specialist with extensive expertise in policy development and advocacy in human rights, and myself, continuing the work which resulted in books such as ‘Global Urban Justice’ and ‘Rights for Others: the slow home-coming of human rights in the Netherlands’. We work closely with the municipality Utrecht team, that includes Sara Miellet, who defended her PhD on local perspectives on human rights in 2022, and Hans Sakkers as a driving force behind Utrecht’s engagement with human rights. Within the project, the UU team, amongst others, looks at the different ways in which local authorities (can) engage with civil society – an issue very much in line with the ambition of the Montaigne Centre to research rule of law developments and innovations with a focus on the role of different actors.

Working on civil society engagement

During a project workshop in Zagreb, another city working on human rights policies and projects, at the end of September, the RIGHTSCITIES network dove deep into the topic of civil society engagement. What are the principles that shape such engagement, and what are good practices? The shrinking civic space throughout Europe, but also the changing nature of civil society engagement – with, for instance, classic non-governmental organizations often replaced by much less organized social movements – make working together within a local human rights ecosystem a matter of constant reflection and innovation. In an intensive setting, representatives of the partner cities Gdansk, Lund, Sopot, Utrecht, and Vienna shared good practices, and lessons learned, and also a wide variety of challenges.

Good practices abound in these human rights cities. Take for instance, the Women’s March in Sopot, in which the city used the momentum of women’s rights protests to set up a yearly month-long festival involving businesses, sports organizations, menstrual health specialists and a variety of other actors in arts, sports, debates and other activities to raise awareness and strengthen women’s rights. Or consider, the process in which Gdansk formulated its equal treatment policy, which included months of meetings in which civil society organizations shared information on the challenges faced by their respective members, thus contributing to mutual understanding and an intersectional approach. Another example is Vienna, and the way in which it works with human rights districts, and has a human rights office that increasingly serves as a hub connecting partners around rights-related themes.  Or, finally, consider the way in which Lund set up social meeting places for the elderly, accessible to all, including in terms of language. The storytellers and story catchers in the city of Utrecht, destined to amplify the unheard voices and the untold stories, for instance those of the queer community in the city.

It was, however, the shared challenges identified that were most interesting, as they showed how the times in which we live resonate in local communities all over Europe. Municipalities and their partner organizations have been responsible for coming up with practical, workable solutions when the national government fails to act – or even becomes part of the problem. The shared challenges are many. For example, the seemingly shifting understanding of ‘democracy’, for instance, to merely point at majority rule instead of embracing a concept that inherently includes human rights, and thus also respect for minorities. There is also the challenge of dealing with anti-democratic forces in building inclusive human rights movements, or dealing with ‘human rights populism’, in which human rights arguments (such as the rights of women) are used to actually curtail human rights (such as those of migrants).

One other challenge of our times, shared by Lund during the workshop, is that preparedness. With the unstable geopolitical order, how does a human rights city prepare for the worst, such as warfare? How to ensure equal access to shelters, for instance, for people in a wheelchair or those unable to leave their apartment?  The times characterized by polarization and global uncertainty, and the issue of timing, also surfaced in discussions on how to productively work with and include movements that rise suddenly, spurred by a single event, with little organization in efforts to build long-term sustainable human rights collaborations.

The work of RIGHTSCITIES is followed with interest by the UN and European organizations, who increasingly see what Eleanor Roosevelt already knew in the 1950s: without local meaning, human rights have no meaning whatsoever. This summer, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights adopted a guidance framework for  human rights cities. The EU Fundamental Rights Agency recognized the potential of human rights cities years ago, and now explicitly mentions the relevance of local authorities in – for instance – its work on shrinking civic space.

And so, the international and Europe teams up with the local, in order to ensure that all residents in a given city have tangible access to rights, from housing to participation. The RIGHTSCITIES team will soon come up with tools, comparisons and background analysis, enough reason to follow the project on LinkedIn, or, even better learn about it at one of the Utrecht events. On the 10^th of December 2025, for instance, the Rightscities team organizes a workshop in the town hall during the general human rights day celebration. Supporting human rights, for those in Utrecht, literally starts around the corner.