Human Rights Law

The role of monitoring implementation of and compliance with the international human rights treaties by states parties is tasked to committees established by the treaties. There are currently ten UN treaty bodies governing international human rights. These are listed below.

The UN Treaty Bodies Database allows users to search for documents by country / region, document type, committee and date / symbol.

All UN member states are required to submit periodic reports to the UN on their implementation of each of the core UN human rights treaties it has ratified. The UN Ratification, Reporting & Documentation website contains each country's reports, UN Committee observations, comments, conclusions and recommendations, and NHRI and Civil Society submissions and shadow reports.

The University of Virginia School of Law has compiled an open access database of Travaux Préparatoires of the nine core human rights treaties: 

• International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), 1965
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 1966
• International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), 1966
• Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), 1979
• Convention against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, 1984
• Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), 1989
• International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, 1999
• Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 2006
• International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, 2006

The database is searchable, browsable and has a subject index.

The UN Audiovisual Library of International Law Human Rights treaties database contains the full text of treaties, travaux and related documents, information about the procedural history, photos, videos and authoritative introductory summaries.

UN Treaty Collection Status of Treaties database - Check any country's human rights and optional protocols treaties' ratification & accession status and reservations

OHCHR's Status of Ratification Interactive Dashboard (OHCHR) - Identify regional and individual country's ratification status of 18 human rights treaties. Useful map navigation. 

Whatconvention.org - useful international legal research search engine for human rights and humanitratian law. Search for conventions and ratification details by topic and/or country

UN Universal Human Rights Index - country-specific human rights information emanating from international human rights mechanisms in the United Nations system: the Treaty Bodies, the Special Procedures and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).