About

  1. What is the purpose of the Universal Human Rights Index?
  2. Which documents does it contain? In which languages?
  3. Who developed the Index?
  4. What is new about it?
  5. How is the information structured? What is an annotation?
  6. How to use the different search functions?

1. What is the purpose of the Universal Human Rights Index?

The Universal Human Rights Index (Index) is designed primarily to facilitate access to human rights documents issued by the UN human rights treaty bodies and the special procedures of the Human Rights Council.

The Index provides the Human Rights Council, international institutions, governments, national human rights institutions, NGOs, universities and the interested public with a new tool for searching the observations and recommendations of these expert bodies. It is now possible to quickly locate relevant information in the large amount of existing UN documentation.

The Index offers instant access to objective and comprehensive UN information on human rights situations around the world. The information compiled in the Index will enable users to gain an international perspective on national and regional human rights developments, as well as an overview on cooperation between States and international institutions.

In this way, the Index greatly facilitates the work of researchers and human rights institutions using these observations and recommendations in their work. Furthermore, it assists governments in the implementation of recommendations, and facilitates follow-up.

2. Which documents does it contain ? In which languages?

The Index contains the observations and recommendations of the following international expert bodies:

More than 1,000 documents have been indexed so far. The Index contains all the concluding observations issued by the treaty bodies from the year 2000 on, as well as all reports published by the Special Procedures since 2006.

The documents can be searched, depending on the translations made available by the UN, in the six official UN languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish). The website itself is available in English, French and Spanish. For the time being all annotations are in English.

3. Who developed the Index?

The Universal Human Rights Index has been developed by the Institute of Public Law of the University of Bern, Switzerland, in collaboration with LexUM, the justice system technologies laboratory of the University of Montreal, Canada. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is responsible for updating and further developing the Index.

4. What is new about it?

Concluding observations by the treaty bodies and reports by the special procedures are accessible on the website of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Official Document System of the United Nations. The Index complements these websites by greatly facilitating access to these documents: It is now possible to search them by keyword, right, country and body and to find directly the relevant paragraphs of the document. And for the first time, observations and recommendations of the independent experts are now interlinked.

With a few clicks searchers can view the assessments of UN bodies of the status of implementation of human rights in any particular situation. This renders the existing vast amount of UN information on human rights even more transparent and accessible.

5. How is the information structured? What is an annotation?

Each country-related observation and recommendation of treaty bodies and special procedures is classified – paragraph by paragraph - by country, by right, by body and by affected persons. The result is called an annotation.

The observations and recommendations are categorized following strictly the legal interpretation of each treaty body and special procedure. This rights-based method of indexing ensures objectivity and is user friendly. It respects the approach of the universal mechanisms dealing with human rights.

The formulation of the annotations follows the original text to a large extent but the annotations are not quotations. They contain the slightly shortened wording of the paragraphs complemented by information on the source document, the right concerned and the persons affected. The introductory formulations have been abbreviated.

Concerning the source document, the following information is given:

In this way, the user can find information by country, right, body, affected persons, document symbol and/or keyword. Both the original paragraph and the original UN document can be directly accessed by clicking on the relevant links.

The rights used for classification in the Index are those contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the following seven core UN human rights treaties and their protocols:

Particular human rights issues covered by the Special Procedures have also been added to this list of rights, including human rights defenders, human rights and the fight against terrorism.

6. How to use the different search functions?

Simple searches can be carried out directly on the home page. Document can be searched by entering a keyword, a country, a body or a right, or any combination of these elements.

By clicking on the advanced search link it is possible to refine searches and make search results more precise by: