State Human Rights Performance and Recommendations under the Universal Periodic Review

Abstract

This paper analyzes recommendations made to states under the UN Human RightsCouncil (HRC) Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in order to determine whetheror not the UPR is making meaningful recommendations to states under review.The UPR reviews the human rights of all UN Member States every four years.During the review, each state receives a number of recommendations from otherUN member states. This paper uses data from UPR Info to determine if stateswith better human rights performance as measured by the CIRI human rightsdata project receive fewer recommendations than states with worse performance.It finds that, even when controlling for other factors, states with worse recordson civil and political rights generally receive more recommendations than stateswith better records. States with lower scores from CIRI on women's economic andpolitical rights receive more recommendations regarding women's issues thanstates with higher scores. These findings hold regardless of region, suggestingthat, at a minimum, the UPR process is identifying violators of human rights.