Just out online (and open access) in the Journal of Law and Society, this article is the main output resulting from my September 2022-January 2023 research fellowship in Amsterdam, at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS).
As per its abstract, the article “considers the use of human rights law as a resource for urban governance by African cities, thereby supplementing the growing literature on ‘human rights cities’ that has thus far focused on the experiences of cities in the Global North. It considers the motivations for and impact of human rights city initiatives, before taking a closer look at reported instances of rights invocation in and by African cities and pointing to factors that explain the seemingly limited traction of human rights law for urban local governments on the continent. The article shows that incomplete and politically contested devolution arrangements across African constitutional systems have combined with pressures pertaining to the domestic enforceability of socio-economic rights to structure a somewhat cautious and fraught, but nevertheless promising, relationship between local governments in African cities and human rights law”.
I remain extremely grateful to NIAS and all the amazing scholars who engaged with my work there, as well as to the National Research Foundation of South Africa and the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, whose funding enabled me to take up the fellowship.
You can read the article here. I have previously written about other published work produced during my NIAS fellowship, here and here.
Marius Pieterse 