A decade ago, the United Nations Human Rights Council (the Council) was established to, in the words of the then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, pave the way for an era of human rights implementation. Hopes were high, therefore, when the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) emerged as an answer to the call for a Council that treats all states on an equal footing. This state-to-state, peer review mechanisms is mandated with the task of reviewing every four years the human rights record of all UN Member States, and to make recommendations regarding reform.
However, following two rounds (cycles) of reviews, the demand for implementing those reforms has not been satisfactory addressed. As the third UPR cycle gets underway, states should have no excuse to shy away from implementing UPR recommendations. Based on the expertise accumulated by UPR Info and interviews with UPR stakeholders, we recently published a new report—The Butterfly Effect—Spreading Good Practices of UPR Implementation. It points to the factors and structures which make the implementation of UPR recommendations more likely.
