ABSTRACT
This chapter begins to focus on local human rights institutions and actions they undertake (or not) towards imposing human rights as norms and principles for the city. In particular, it explores issues in urban politics that come to be contested, understood and governed through a competing framework, including human rights. These ‘conversations’ involve agents and organisations with a stake in human rights within the camps of civil society and local government. The focus here is, in particular, on human rights departments in New York and Barcelona and changing proactive and defensive approaches to human rights. The first and second parts track the interventions of the Commission on Human Rights in New York on LGBT rights, from sexual orientation to gender identity discrimination. The third and fourth parts concentrate on Barcelona and controversies raised by the city’s Civil Rights Department during a phase of radicalisation of its mandate and a practice of human rights close to the right to the city, followed by a more moderate phase coinciding with a conservative turn in city politics and the approval of the Ordinance of Good Citizenship. The fourth part concludes the chapter.
