UN Universal Periodic Review – East Timor
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is the latest reporting mechanism at the UN, created by the new UN Human Rights Council. As such, it is states themselves who examine other states (as opposed to independent experts on the convention committees), with each country in the world reporting and being examined during a 4-year cycle. This means a great degree of politics enters into the process – both as peer pressure and as unholy alliances between countries with shared interests. But it also gives great room for civil society to play a role: in submitting a shadow report with additional information, and to put pressure on the either the examined or the examining states to focus on the critical issues.
The United Nations system, begun in 1945 with the UN Charter, depends on the participation by states, as signatories to treaties, as authors of reports on the progress and rate of implementation of rights, and as parties to face-to-face meetings and recommendations. The UN works both as a peer system (via the Universal Periodic Review), where states judge and place pressure on each other - or avoids doing so for political reasons – as well as a system of independent experts (via the committees of the various conventions), who examine, interpret and recommend or criticise the efforts of countries on the background of the normative texts and the internationally binding law.
The international legal system has the state at its centre: the state ratifies treaties and thereby obliged itself to respect, protect and fulfil the right to education. And it is the state that must report on its own implementation and who can be “named and shamed” in public for not doing so. Treaties specify mechanism for how the international community can hold the state to account, exerting pressure from above, and therefore such mechanism can be very powerful - or they can become overtly politicised at the UN or regional fora. It is the challenge of campaigners and the courts to place this power in the hands of those whose rights have been violated by the state.
For more information on how to understand and use the potentials of UPR as an instrument to put pressure on the State, please visit the homepage of the UPR.
Of interesting links here, we recommend to search the database, which can be done either by country or by theme. Like the UN human rights committees, there are documents here from past sessions that can be used for “naming and shaming”, as these are all publically accessible. Again, it must also be stressed that these documents are the outcomes of a highly politicised UN process.
More importantly and with and eye to the future, do pay attention to when your country is due to be examined, either in the calendar or in each session's agenda. This is especially interesting as the process needs an input of data and here you can play a central role in organising the civil society of your country. The documents employed by the examining countries are 3 fold: the report of the country under review; the documents of the UN; and the submissions of National Human Rights Institutes and other stakeholder. The latter is where civil society can play an active role in mobilisation. Please therefore pay attention to the deadlines for submission and the technical guidelines.
