Get Up, Stand Up: Council
Ranked On Human Rights

Harlem — When the New York City Council voted last March on a bill imposing safety requirements on the recycling of electronic equipment, its members probably didn't think they were weighing in on a human rights issue. But according to the Urban Justice Center, they were—and now they're being graded on it.

The Center, a 24-year-old legal advocacy group for low-income people, last month issued a report that ranked all 51 councilmembers on their 2008 human rights records, according to a scoring system that considered voting record, sponsorship of bills and the opinion of advocates active in different issue areas.

It's the first such ranking issued by the Center—which noted in its report that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights turned 60 years old in 2008. "It really has been a buildup of our work over the past few years talking to advocates and communities and realizing there's a bit of a disconnect: There's no real way for constituents to keep abreast of what is going on legislatively," says Ejim Dike, director of the Center's Human Rights Project. "The only information they get about their council members is from the council member."

While groups like the American Conservative Union and People for the American Way rate members of Congress, and the Sierra Club and National Rifle Association give scores to state legislators, City Council members tend to get ranked more often by the media on issues like office expenses and absenteeism. And if it seems odd to evaluate a city rather than a country in these weighty matters, consider that New York City's population of 8.3 million is comparable to that of Austria, Israel or Azerbaijan – all places that certainly have amassed human rights records.

The Urban Justice Center uses a broad definition of "human rights" in its report, explaining that "a range of human rights are recognized by the Constitution of the United States" and that "New York State's Constitution ... recognizes the right to an education, as well as a government's obligation to provide aid, care and support to the needy." For its part, the Universal Declaration recognizes a right to marry, to own property, to have an adequate standard of living and even to "rest and leisure." Dike says the Center consulted advocates in different issue areas to determine which pieces of local legislation to include in the analysis.

Some of the bills upon which the Center bases its score have more obvious human rights implications than others. The "Human Rights in Government Operations" bill, which requires city agencies to conduct a human rights analysis of their policies – but hasn't yet passed – has a clear connection. But the Council's decision in November to approve the Willets Point Development Plan, a rezoning that will result in the removal of existing auto-repair shops and other business from the "Iron Triangle" in Queens to make way for new development, is a more interesting pick. "It's really an issue of displacing workers from their places of work and has the potential of robbing them of their livelihood," says Dike, who says the problem extends to other development projects around the city, from Coney Island to Harlem. "If you don’t have people advocating for workers, small businesses, tenants, there are no real laws protecting their rights and they don’t have the resources that bigger businesses have. They get displaced without ceremony."