UPR Info contributes to first book entirely dedicated to the UPR

UPR Info's Executive director, Roland Chauville, contributed to the publication of the very first book entirely dedicated to the UPR. "Human Rights and the UPR - Rituals and Ritualism" is a collection of papers by scholars and practitioners and edited by Professor Hilary Charlesworth and Emma Larking. Roland's chapter provides a comprehensive analysis of the successes and failures of UPR's first cycle. The chapter looks first into what has made the UPR a successful mechanism, mainly its universal approach, the emphasis put on human rights at the national and international level and the implementation rate of recommendations. The second part describes the shortfalls of the process, such as weak modalities, the lack of follow-up mechanism and the lack of specificity of recommendations. A third part of Roland's analysis concentrates on the space of NGOs at the UPR, which presented a mixture of tremendous opportunities and serious threats.

The book provides the first sustained analysis of the UPR and explains how the UPR functions within the architecture of the United Nations. It draws on socio-legal scholarship and the insights of human rights practitioners in order to consider its regulatory power and its capacity to influence the behaviour of states. The book also highlights the significance of the embodied features of the UPR, with its cyclical and intricately managed interactive dialogues. Additionally, it discusses the rituals associated with the UPR, examines the tendency of the UPR towards hollow ritualism (which undermines its aspiration to address human rights violations comprehensively) and suggests how this ritualism might be overcome.

The book is published by Cambridge University Press and is available for order here.