Sources and techniques for getting started with human rights research - especially for the International Human Rights Clinic and other students and faculty at the Univ. of San Francisco School of Law.
Online and print country report sources. Part of Georgetown's Human Rights Law Research Guide. (The Guide gives Georgetown's call numbers for print reports. Most of the print reports will be available at the Zief Library or at other local Bay Area libraries.)
This in-depth guide describes methods and resources for human rights research, and links to a vast variety of helpful sites. It is part of the American Society of International Law's Electronic Resources Guide.
Charter body documents include UPR documents, reports of special rapporteurs, independent experts, and working groups. Treaty body documents include recent state party reports, Concluding Observations, and responses.
"Access to country-specific human rights information emanating from international human rights mechanisms in the United Nations system." Compiles "conclusions and recommendations addressed by UN independent experts to specific countries." Advanced search is best. You can search and filter by: state; rights ("themes"); affected persons; body making the recommendation; keywords; and document symbol.
Refworld gathers and organizes a massive amount of country information, news, and reports on the human rights and conflict situations from the UN, other IGOs, and NGOs. Refworld has News, Country Profiles, and Country Reports. Its "Advanced Search" is a great way to find documents relevant to your country or topic.
Bayefsky's documents by theme and documents by state features help pinpoint "concluding observations" and other documents on specific nations' practices. [Last updated in 2005. Try the UN's Universal Human Rights Index to find more recent UN treaty-body documents.]
UN Women is "the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women." The Publications page has country- and topic- specific information.
