Damian Etone, The Human Rights Council: The Impact of the Universal Periodic Review in Africa (Routledge, 2021, xv + 215 pp, £36.99) ISBN 9781032175317 (pb).

Abstract

The United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), established in 2006, brought with it an innovative mechanism for reviewing states’ human rights performance—the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Operating in four and a half year cycles, the UPR is a state-led peer review mechanism whereby UN member states participate in an interactive dialogue and receive recommendations to improve their human rights standards. It is a wholly cooperative process, and so can be understood as a ‘soft’ mechanism, the recommendations of which are not legally binding on the state under review. As a non-coercive and non-confrontational platform, the UPR was subject to early criticism for being ‘dependent on the goodwill of states’ and ‘institutionally weak’ (p 23). In light of these differing views on the mechanism’s potential, research has sought to assess, inter alia, the extent that it generates positive human rights changes on the ground, and what factors may contribute to this.