This guide is written for persons representing refugees in political asylum claims and other human rights advocates who would like to collect information about a particular country's human rights conditions. It is not suggested that the researcher only use UN documentation for this purpose. There are many other good resources that should also be consulted, including U.S. State Department Country Reports, Inter-American, European and African regional human rights commissions and courts, International Criminal Tribunals, Amnesty International reports and press releases, Human Rights Watch reports and press releases, other NGO resources, and news wire services. This guide however will only address UN sources. Whenever resources are available on the Internet in full text or summary form, links are also included. Links to many of the resources mentioned in this guide can also be found at the Minnesota Human Rights Library web site.
There are six major types of UN documentation useful for human rights country research: 1) Country-specific reports of the UN Commission on Human Rights and the UN General Assembly, 2) Resolutions of either the General Assembly or the Commission on Human Rights, 3) "Thematic" reports of the UN Commission on Human Rights, 4) treaty body reports, 5) Security Council reports and resolutions, and 6) UN press releases.
Certain countries have been the subject of scrutiny by the UN Commission on Human Rights, which meets annually in Geneva each spring. [Note, the Human Rights Commission is different from the Human Rights Committee. The latter is a treaty body, discussed in item 4 of this guide]. Over time the Commission has appointed independent experts or special rapporteurs to investigate the human rights situation in some of these countries. The experts file a report to the Commission at the next annual session or sometimes also periodically during the year. Some of these experts have also been asked to file interim reports the following fall to the General Assembly.
In Spring 2003, for example, expert reports were filed at the Commission on Human Rights concerning Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, Cambodia, Colombia, Croatia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Haiti, Iraq, Israel & Palestine, Myanmar, Serbia, Somalia, and Sudan. These 2003 reports are available at the OHCHR site (the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights).
In the Fall of 2002 interim country reports were filed by these experts at the General Assembly on the following countries: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sudan, Iraq, Rwanda, and Former Yugoslavia. These reports are also available on the UN General Assembly site.
Country-specific reports are usually very comprehensive, ranging from 15 to 30 pages or more in length, with addenda. They are normally a very credible, independent assessment of the country concerned. Usually many of the name, place and incident reports are included in the report, useful to the researcher for corroborating specific events or similar incidents of persecution.
Both the General Assembly and the Commission on Human Rights also adopt resolutions from time to time on the human rights situation in particular countries. In the case of the Commission, these resolutions often renew the mandate of the special rapporteur or expert who has been asked to investigate the country concerned. However these resolutions do not usually address particular human rights events in the country, but speak in terms of general conditions or observations. They often "congratulate" the government involved for making valiant efforts to improve human rights conditions in their country, but note regret or concern over continuing abuses.
These resolutions are usually promptly reported in the daily press releases for each body. The full text of the resolutions can be found in the final report of each organization, but these reports are usually not made available electronically until much later on the Internet, usually just before a parent body meeting is scheduled. Hardcopies of the final reports usually can also be found in major UN depository libraries six months to a year after the relevant session adjourns.
Less understood and appreciated for human rights research purposes are the so-called "thematic" reports of the Commission on Human Rights. These can be valuable resources, but are more difficult to research for country specific cases. They are devoted to a worldwide investigation of a particular type of human rights abuse (arbitrary executions, torture, arbitrary detention, etc.). The reports are submitted each year by a special rapporteur or a five-member working group, depending upon which structure (group or individual rapporteur) was adopted when the thematic mechanism was first initiated. Because of the desire to be impartial and comprehensive, the reports tend to cover a large number of countries. Name, place and event details are often addressed. There are usually 2 to 5 pages covered for every country named in the report. Sometimes the rapporteur or working group involved also visits a particular country during the year and files an addendum to his or her report chronicling the particular situation in that country.
Because of the many more countries named in these thematic reports than in any other resource made available through the UN, a human rights researcher is much more likely to find annual information on the country he or she is investigating in these thematic reports than in the other available resources.
The UN office in Geneva promptly posts the full text of these thematic reports during each Commission session.
Links to these reports themselves can be found at the UN site in Geneva, but this site will only be useful if you know the document reference number for the report you are seeking (these reference numbers are included in the country index above).
There are now 25 different thematic mechanisms reporting annually to the Commission on Human Rights. However, country-specific discussions do not regularly appear in all of these reports.
Most States have ratified or acceded to one or more human rights treaties. There are now seven major human rights treaties (with the latest entrant, the Migrant Workers Convention, just coming into force on 1 July 2003). Each ratifying or acceding State must periodically report on the human rights conditions in their country to the relevant treaty committee. A smaller number of countries have also agreed to permit individal human rights complaints against them to be submitted to the relevant treaty body for adjudication. The committee usually issues some comments on the occasion of each country's report, noting both areas of concern and areas of improvement. Sometimes these reports, as well as the press releases during the 2 or 3 day period when the relevant government fields questions from the committee, can contain useful information.
The committee reports themselves are also usually available, through the UN Geneva site. Press releases from the treaty bodies are also accessible at both the main UN web site and the Geneva site.
The seven major human rights treaty bodies are:
Sometimes human rights assessments are part of peacekeeping reports prepared under the auspices of the Security Coucil. In past years this has been true for the peacekeeping missions to El Salvador (ONUSAL), Guatemala (MINUGUA), and Cambodia. Many of the periodic reports issued during these missions are now being posted on the UN Security Council web site.
Nearly all of the documents discussed in this Guide are also summarized in daily press releases of the relevant UN body. The main UN web site now has an impressive search engine that can locate many of these press releases. In addition, the UN office in Geneva regularly posts press releases of the organizations meeting there, including the Commission on Human Rights, and most of the treaty bodies.