Call for Papers on “Human Rights at the Local Level”

The Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights (NQHR) is a double blind, peer-reviewed journal published by SAGE. It publishes high-quality academic articles on issues of international human rights and their protection and promotion around the world. The NQHR Board would like to invite paper submissions on the topic of:
Human Rights at the Local Level.

Long past are the days that human rights were purely seen as a national matter, in which international monitoring bodies did not look behind the veil of the state. As Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, human rights begin at home. But how does this work in practice and what are the legal implications?

The NQHR is looking for contributions for a special issue on “human rights at the local level”. The special issue will explore which local institutions, ranging from regional authorities to cities and civil society groups, can play a role in the implementation of human rights. Localising human rights has become salient for many reasons: decentralization efforts have in many countries put state tasks in the hands of local rather than national authorities.

Globally, the rise of human rights cities can be seen. And most poignantly, human rights issues and problems materialize most clearly at the local: from homelessness in big cities, the reception of refugees and displaced people, local policies affecting people with disabilities, the realization of socio-economic rights like access to housing, to insecurity or lack of access to key resources in rural areas.

Local power dynamics, formal legal divisions of tasks, the content of local policies, the existence of networks of civil society and the local discourse on human rights: all these factors influence whether human rights are effectively implemented at the local level. Often, human rights become arenas of contestation between different local groups or between local and national authorities. For all of these reasons, the issue of human rights at the local level need a critical re-think.

The Quarterly is looking for innovative and original scholarly contributions on these issues, both conceptual and empirical. Multidisciplinary papers and those going beyond a mere legal approach are actively welcomed.

Practical information:

Manuscripts may be submitted through our Scholar One submission system. All manuscripts should be original, double-spaced with 1.5 inch margins, typed in 12-point font, and no longer than 10,000 words in length (including footnotes). Please submit your article in Microsoft Word format without the authors name in order to facilitate the blind review. Submissions must be formatted according to the OSCOLA guidelines. More information can be found on the website above.

The NQHR is indexed and abstracted in www.jurisquare.com, CSA Social Science Collection (Sociological Abstracts, Social Services Abstracts, Worldwide Political Science Abstracts, Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS)), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Social Scisearch, Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition, International Political Science Abstracts (IPSA) and International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS).

Deadline for submissions: 15 October 2017.