Human Rights Council

Today marks the beginning of the 19th session of the Human Rights Council, scheduled to run from February 27 to March 23, 2012. This session will also mark the official end of the first cycle of the Universal Periodic Review mechanism, which has seen all 193 member states of the UN undergo a review of their human rights record, creating a baseline for future reviews. The unofficial end of “UPR” (as it is known) happened in October 2011, but with the adoption of the last remaining reports at the 19th session, the international community is officially at a point where we can look back on the first run-through of this new mechanism and discuss changes for the second. Universal periodic review was one of the proposals made in the lead-up to the World Summit of 2005, with the outcome of the World Summit confirming the creation of a standing Human Rights Council out of the ashes of the old part-time Commission on Human Rights (A/RES/60/1). The idea of the Council serving as a…