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Programmes Improving access to human rights information

Common bodies of human rights information, such as legislation, policies, jurisprudence and more, remain trapped in difficult-to-access PDFs and stacks of paper. The situation affects many actors within the global human rights movement, from lawyers arguing cases before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and diplomats lobbying states at the United Nations Human Rights Council, to local activists translating legal decisions into tangible change for their communities.

This information can be a force for good, so we at HURIDOCS strive to make such collections more accessible. We do so by helping NGOs and institutions to build online libraries that are easy to navigate, analyse and maintain. With better access to the information produced by these mechanisms, human rights defenders can pursue advocacy and litigation with more impact.

Check out the latest updates on our blog, and explore some highlights of our collaborations with partners below:

Streamlining access to Universal Periodic Review recommendations

UPR Info supports human rights defenders by improving access to information coming out of the Universal Periodic Review mechanism. We rebuilt their database with machine learning features, which resulted in faster updates and increased sustainability.

Making human rights jurisprudence easy to find in Africa

Over the course of many fruitful years, we have worked with the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA) to build the African Human Rights Case Law Analyser in order to improve access to rulings issued by the region’s human rights mechanisms.

Mapping and sharing legal frameworks for digital rights

HURIDOCS joined a coalition of organisations to create CYRILLA, an open database of digital rights law around the world. The multilingual library makes it easier to analyse these legal frameworks by bringing them all together into one place.

Facilitating better international policy language for girls’ rights

We helped Plan International integrate more powerful features into the international human rights law library on their Girls’ Rights Platform, including the ability to save and edit individual paragraphs. Why? Existing language often serves as a starting point for new policy.

Strengthening the visibility of Human Rights Council resolutions

Although Human Rights Council documents are openly available online, they can be tough to navigate for human rights defenders with few resources. HURIDOCS develops the RightDocs database to make these texts easier to find.

Building an insightful case law library for the Americas

Decisions issued by regional human rights mechanisms are important tools for advocates — only if they can be easily found and analysed. HURIDOCS has long collaborated with the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) to make sure these rulings are available to the changemakers who need them. How? With the SUMMA case law database.