The UN Human Rights Council (hereafter referred to as the Council) is a key part of the international human rights system. Access to and effective use of the Council’s resolutions and related information is critical for not only for transparency and accountability of the Council, but also for human rights advocacy. With this in mind, HURIDOCS developed RightDocs, a platform for searching and accessing Council resolutions, amendments, votes, reports, and all related documents.
With the 35th Regular Session of the Human Rights Council (HRC35) right around the corner (6 to 23 June 2017), RightDocs has been updated and is ready to use for free by all, with the Council’s most recent officially finalised resolutions and reports*, which includes all of the sessions up until HRC34. (You can access the current versions of the HRC34 resolutions on the Council’s website.)
* Note: The information shared through RightDocs is based on official, public UN documents and is updated according to final Council session reports. There can often be a delay of two months or more before the release of these official documents due to translation and subsequent sponsorships.
Resolutions you can use
RightDocs is the complete, searchable, and filterable collection of official Council resolutions, amendments, presidential statements, decisions and reports. This platform lets users:
- Search full-text resolutions, amendments and reports
- Filter by topic, agenda item, session, (co)sponsor States, voting results and dates
- Discover voting patterns on topics over time, and compare those patterns
- Identify prospective co-sponsors or supporters to approach
RightDocs was inspired by consultations and feedback received from international and local human rights organisations, diplomats and academia. RightDocs makes resolutions and documents more accessible for anyone, regardless of their location or level of engagement with the Council. It aims to encourage human rights organisations’ active contribution to the Council’s work, and promote transparency, and accountability. This new level of transparency will strengthen the Council’s promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe.
One of the features of the platform is that it can be used to easily track down a specific resolution. For example, one of the panel discussions on the agenda for HRC35 is on the topic Unaccompanied migrant children and adolescents and human rights, mandated by Resolution 33/7 from the 33rd Regular Session. Information related to this resolution could be found in the following ways:
- Using the term 33/7 in the search field (as shown in screenshot below)
- Using relevant keywords in the search field, such as unaccompanied migrant children
- Filtering by topics Children and Migrants (using the AND search mode option)
- Filtering for Session results from the 33rd Regular Session and by Agenda Item under Item 3
For some of these search techniques, where more information is given, resolution 33/7 will appear as the only result, while for other more general terms this may be included as one of a number of similar results.
The development of RightDocs has been generously supported by the Permanent Mission of Denmark to the UN in Geneva and with valuable feedback and input from Amnesty International, Universal Rights Group, FORUM ASIA, the International Service for Human Rights, and more than 15 NGOs and diplomatic missions.
As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions about what can be improved on RightDocs. Do not hesitate to drop us a line!