The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is a department of the United Nations Secretariat that works to promote and protect human rights that are guaranteed under international law and stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The office was established by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 December 1993 in the wake of the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights.
The University for Peace (UPEACE) is an international university and intergovernmental organization established as a treaty organisation by the United Nations General Assembly in 1980. The university offers postgraduate, doctoral, and executive programmes related to the study of peace and conflict, environment and development, and international law.
The United Nations Prizes in the Field of Human Rights were instituted by United Nations General Assembly in 1966. They are intended to "honour and commend people and organizations which have made an outstanding contribution to the promotion and protection of the human rights embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in other United Nations human rights instruments".
The School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) is a graduate school of Johns Hopkins University based in Washington, D.C. The school also maintains campuses in Bologna, Italy and Nanjing, China.
Lyal S. Sunga is a well-known specialist on international human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law.
Salim Ahmed Salim is a Tanzanian politician and diplomat who has worked in the international diplomatic arena since the early 1960s. He served as prime minister for one year, from 1984 to 1985.
Manfred Nowak is an Austrian human rights expert, who served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture from 2004 to 2010. He is Secretary General of the Global Campus of Human Rights in Venice, Italy, Professor of International Human Rights, and Scientific Director of the Vienna Master of Arts in Applied Human Rights at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. He is also co-founder and former Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights and a former judge at the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2016, he was appointed Independent Expert leading the United Nations Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty.
Prince Zeid bin Ra'ad bin Zeid al-Hussein is a Jordanian former diplomat who is the Perry World House Professor of the Practice of Law and Human Rights at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the president and CEO of the International Peace Institute. He also served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2014 to 2018. He played a central role in the establishment of the International Criminal Court, and was elected the first president of the Assembly of State Parties of the International Criminal Court in September 2002. He also served as a political affairs officer in UNPROFOR in the former Yugoslavia from 1994 to 1996.
UN Watch is a Geneva-based non-governmental organization (NGO) whose stated mission is "to monitor the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its own Charter". It is an accredited NGO in Special Consultative Status to the UN Economic and Social Council and an Associate NGO to the UN Department of Public Information.
The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, also known as Geneva Graduate Institute, is a graduate-level research university in Geneva, Switzerland dedicated to the study of international affairs, with a particular emphasis on the cross-cutting fields of international relations and development issues.
Rodrigo Alberto Carazo Zeledón is a Costa Rican politician, economist, lawyer and political scientist who was elected in June 2022 to a four-year term as a member of the UN Human Rights Committee by the state parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. He was Costa Rica's representative to the United Nations from 2018 to 2022, having presented his credentials the 31st of August 2018. He was the first Ombudsman of the Republic of Costa Rica and a former delegate to the Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica who served in that capacity during the Pacheco administration. He was president of the Partido Acción Ciudadana.
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a mechanism of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC) that emerged from the 2005 UN reform process. Commonly referred to as the UPR, it was established by General Assembly resolution 60/251 of 3 April 2006, the UPR periodically examines the human rights performance of all 193 UN Member States. It is intended to complement, not duplicate, the work of other human rights mechanisms, including the UN human rights treaty bodies. This is the first international human rights mechanism to address all countries and all human rights. The Working Group on the UPR, which is composed of the HRC's 47 Member States and chaired by the HRC President, conducts country reviews.
Eric Paul Schwartz is the former president of Refugees International and former United States Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration.
Rajsoomer Lallah was a Mauritian lawyer and judge who played a leading role in International Human Rights cases.
Laura Dupuy Lasserre is a Uruguayan diplomat, and beginning in 2009, was the Permanent Representative of Uruguay to the United Nations Office at Geneva with the rank of Ambassador. She was elected President of the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2011, and is recognized as the longest-serving President in the history of the UNHRC.
UPR Info is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) headquartered in Switzerland. The organisation main goal is to raise awareness and provide see capacity-building tools to the different actors of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, such as United Nations Member States, NGOs, National Human Rights Institutions (NHRI) and civil society actors. It was established in 2008.
Miloon Kothari is a scholar and activist who served from 2000 to 2008 as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on adequate housing with the Human Rights Council. From 2015 to 2022, he was the President of UPR Info. He was convener of the Working Group on Human Rights in India and the UN (WGHR) from 2009 to 2014, an Indian human rights coalition that notably focuses on the Universal Periodic Review. He is the founder of the Delhi-based Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN), which aims to work toward the "realization of the human rights to adequate housing and land." He currently serves as a member of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.
Volker Türk is an Austrian lawyer and United Nations official. He has been the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights since October 2022.
