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Image credit: Jun Wu

Hands up who’s heard of the Universal Periodic Review? OK. UPR then? The Human Rights Council? The United Nations anyone?

Every 4 years your country has its human rights record (and its compliance with its related international obligations) reviewed by its peers, other countries. This mechanism is arguably the jewel in the cap of the new Human Rights Council, which recently replaced the allegedly toothless Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations. The lack of impact was reportedly to do with the ability of Commission members to use this status to avert the Commission’s critical gaze away from their own human rights records.

The resulting UPR is an intergovernmental process where every state is placed on an equal footing, as each will take its turn under the spotlight once within the 4 year cycle. With the help of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, reports are submitted in time for the tri-annual Council sessions where 16 states are reviewed in 48 hours over a fortnight. The state itself submits a report; the UN compiles a report from its sources; and finally, a summary of information provided by NGOs is also included.

These concise documents alone provide a wealth of reliable and up to date information on a particular state’s human rights issues and even without any actual review are surely a welcome development - well worth a read.

The review itself, however, provides an opportunity for dialogue between the state under review and the other states, where a presentation by the state under review is followed by other states’ comments, recommendations and then its own response to these.

This intense 3 hour review is followed-up a few weeks later by a plenary session, where further dialogue ensues regarding which of the recommendations have been accepted or rejected by the state. The interesting element of the plenary sessions is that some time is also set aside for the oft more candid NGOs to enter into the interstate dialogue.

Why is any of this important? Well the good thing is that this mechanism provides a very solid basis upon which you and I can hold states to account. The information is all public. It is all recorded in writing (and via multimedia webcast) and one can clearly see which recommendations a state has voluntarily accepted and sometimes which of these it has actually implemented on the ground.

The UPR may be very new, but its youth should not disguise its serious potential. The UK went under the spotlight in the 1st UPR session, last year. Check out the documents - in particular the UK’s responses to the recommendations made to it by other states - you may be shocked. Now I may be wrong, but I don’t remember reading anything about any of this in the press! Hopefully this will change, perhaps even in time for the states coming up for review this November, in the 6th of the 12 sessions of the first UPR cycle. The involvement of civil society (through the press) is necessary for several reasons, including: for developing real accountability and enforcement, for improving the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the facts and for ensuring that the development of human rights generally is representative of the global community. Under its acronym, UPR, the Universal Periodic Review has the potential to be both short, and sweet.