Conceptualizing human rights obligations and responsibilities in cities: An emerging research agenda

Abstract Traditionally a state-centric regime, international human rights law (IHRL) has not quite caught up with the global trend whereby cities are increasingly engaging with international human rights norms. Normative gaps in IHRL prevail in conceptualizing the complementary roles of local governments in undertaking human rights obligations and the concurrent human rights responsibilities of non-state actors. This article contributes to addressing these normative gaps by outlining a research agenda in relation to the right to food that connects the currently siloed bodies of scholarship on IHRL and urban food governance (UFG). Proliferating in cities across the world over the last two decades, UFG initiatives aim at bringing together stakeholders across different sectors to tackle food-related problems. This article argues that their place-based nature and multi-actor governance model render UFG initiatives rich case studies for contextualizing and conceptualizing the nature and scope of local governments’ obligations and non-state actors’ responsibilities under IHRL. Importantly, the article proposes a research framework underpinned by a human rights localization perspective to foster interaction between IHRL and UFG scholarship to inform the normative development of the notions of complementary obligations and concurrent responsibilities under IHRL in a way that responds to empirical realities in urban governance.