International organizations include intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), which are created by treaty, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). These organizations play a critical role in the international legal system by monitoring treaty compliance, hosting conferences on topics of international concern, and creating websites that serve as online repositories for information on specific topics such as human rights.
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) website is the starting place for any human rights research within the United Nations human rights system. The UN human rights system includes two types of human rights monitoring mechanisms: Treaty-Based Bodies and Charter-Based Bodies.
There are ten human rights Treaty Bodies:
Under most of these human rights treaties, State Parties must submit periodic reports to the relevant Treaty Body as to how they are implementing the treaty provisions. Treaty Bodies monitor compliance by considering such State Parties' reports and conducting country inquiries. They may also consider individual complaints. In addition to deciding particular cases, these Bodies publish interpretations of their respective human rights treaties in the form of General Comments. Such general comments are invaluable for treaty interpretation and can be found via the UN Treaty Body Database. Each Treaty Body also has its own web page where one can locate its general comments as well as all other important information about that body. The Human Rights Committee page, for example, provides access to its key documents, status of ratifications and latest statements and activities.
The Charter-Based Bodies include the Human Rights Council (HRC), Special Procedures, the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and Independent Investigations. UPR is a peer review procedure that each UN Member State undergoes every 4 1/2 years. Special Procedures provides for the appointment of individual human rights experts, known as Rapporteurs, to address particular issues by country or theme. The opinions and reports of the Rapporteurs may also be quite useful for interpretation of the relevant human rights treaties. There are currently 45 thematic mandates and 14 country mandates. Each such thematic or country mandate has its own web page where one can find the Rapporteur's latest statements, activities and reports.
At the OHCHR website, one can find a number of tools for accessing the documentation of the Treaty and Charter Based Bodies. The Universal Human Rights Index provides access to observations and recommendations by the Treaty Bodies, Special Procedures and UPR. The Treaty Body database provides access to documentation from the Treaty Bodies including country visit reports, concluding observations, individual complaints, jurisprudence, general comments and information from Civil Society Organizations (i.e. "shadow reports"). These tools are helpful but they assume a bit of knowledge on the part of the researcher i.e. type of document you are seeking. Also, they offer limited keyword search capability. NGOs, like the IJRC (see box to the right) have tried to fill these gaps by creating a number of helpful research tools for the novice human rights researcher.
The regional human rights systems also have mechanisms for monitoring compliance with regional human rights treaties. The Inter-American human rights system, for example, like the UN system, provides for rapporteurships on specific themes. A list of these rapporteurships is available at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights website. There is, for example, a Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Commission website provides guidance as to how to present a petition relating to a potential human rights violation, including an Informational Booklet on the Petition and Case System as well as a Digest on its Admissibility and Competence Criteria.
The International Justice Resource Center has created an excellent video on Advocacy Before the Inter- American Human Rights System.
The European Human Rights system is the oldest such system in existence. The European Court of Human Rights is considered the most effective humans rights court. In addition, the Court has referred to U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Also, the Court’s decisions interpret the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights & Fundamental Freedoms (1950) which is similar to the ICCPR which the U.S. has ratified (albeit with reservations). For these reasons, it is important for U.S. researchers to know about the case law of the European Court. It is accessible via the Court's HUDOC database as well as via Westlaw and Lexis. The Court also has a new knowledge sharing platform, ECHR-KS, which enables researchers to locate case law by treaty article.
The International Justice Resource Center (IJRC) is a hub of human rights information including training videos, country fact sheets (which you can also find under its Media & Publications tab), charts and a list of jurisprudence & documents databases.
Of special note is the IJRC's human rights document search tool. This tool allows one to do a keyword search for documentation across all UN treaty bodies.
