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Balancing human rights, environmental protection and international trade lessons from the EU experience by ISBN: 9781474201247Publication Date: Oxford ; Portland : Hart Pub. 2015
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS PROTECTION > OHCHR
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has 3 mandates: standard setting, monitoring, and implementation. OHCHR provides secretariat support for all UN human rights bodies, maintains the specialized human rights document databases, and administers the communications/complaints procedures available under the various human rights bodies.
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS PROTECTION > UN Human Rights Monitoring Bodies
The United Nations system for the promotion and protection of human rights is comprised of 2 main bodies :
1. Charter-based Bodies of the United Nations
- Human Rights CouncilThe Human Rights Council examines, monitors, advises and publicly reports on human rights situations in specific countries (country mandates), or on major phenomena of human rights violations worldwide (thematic mandates).
- Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council"Special procedures" is the general name given to the mechanisms established by the Commission on Human Rights and assumed by the Human Rights Council to address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Currently, there are 31 thematic and 8 country mandates.
- UPR-Info.orgStarted in April 2008, the Universal Periodic Review is a process which involves a review of the human rights records of all 192 UN Member States once every four years.
2. Treaty-based Bodies of the United Nations
- Consideration of individual complaints or communicationsThe Human Rights Treaty bodies also publish general comments on the treaties and organize discussions on related themes.
- Core international human rights instrumentsThe treaty bodies perform a number of functions in accordance with the provisions of the treaties that created them. These include:
Consideration of State parties' reports;
Consideration of individual complaints or communications. - General commentsFor a comprehensive overview of the United Nations human rights treaty system, download OHCHR Fact Sheet 30 here.
- Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Human Rights Treaty BodiesU.N. bodies created under the international human rights treaties and made up of independent experts mandated to monitor State parties' compliance with their treaty obligations. There are eight human rights treaty bodies that monitor implementation of the core international human rights treaties.
- OHCHR fact sheet ; 30Tools to locate State Reports and Concluding Observations
