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Search tips and methodology

To learn more about how to use the UHRI and its functions, please see tutorial and consult the user-guide.

What can you do?
How to use the UHRI?
How is the UHRI populated?

1. What can you do?

The UHRI allows you to:

  • Produce overviews of recommendations by region, country, by human rights themes, by concerned person/groups or by Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
  • Make targeted searches by using one or multiple filters and narrow it down further through applying timeframes or refining the geographical scope.
  • The “document search” allows you to search the original documents, the so called reports from the mechanisms which contains the recommendations that are entered and indexed in the UHRI.

2. How to use the UHRI?

Summary by region and country

You can select a region in the dropdown list under “more options” or a country by clicking on the map or by using the country filter. The results page will show all documents containing human rights recommendations for the selected region or country.

Summary by Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

On the SDG page, you can choose one or several of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and their targets e.g. goal 17 “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions”, the nineteen targets will come up below the query. By clicking one target, or a selection of them, and then the apply button, the number of recommendations that are linked to that target will be displayed on the next page in a graph.

Search

When you apply the basic search filter, you can do a simple search by country, theme, human rights mechanism, concerned person/groups, and/or Sustainable Development Goal. Within each category, single or multiple entries are possible. Entries can be removed by clicking on the cross next to the selection. The “text search” can include single or multiple words or phrases

More options

If you click on “more options” this allows for a more in-depth search through additional categories. The search by “document symbol” refers to the document number indicated on the top right corner of a United Nations document. The user can also select the time period for which the search should be run.

Document search

The “document search” allows you to search the original documents, the so called reports from the mechanisms which contains the recommendations that are entered and indexed in the UHRI.

A few tips

  • Do not forget to reset your filters once a new search is made.
  • You can export the data by clicking on the “export button” or print the information by clicking on the “print button” and further analyse the data.
  • Are you lost with all the acronyms? See the acronyms list.
  • Please note: Recommendations made by a human rights mechanism are normally available in the UHRI after six to 12 months, once issued officially in the relevant UN languages. The document you are searching for might not yet be available.

How is the UHRI populated?

The Universal Human Rights Index aims to provide a complete and searchable record of the country-specific guidance issued by the human rights monitoring mechanisms.

To this end, key outcome documents are broken down into individual paragraphs and annotated for concerned groups, human rights themes, and Sustainable Development Goals.

A complete overview of the thematic categories in use can be found here. Please note that thematic annotations are solely provided to facilitate research and do not imply a substantive assessment by OHCHR or the human rights monitoring mechanisms.

The process of thematic annotation is supported by text classification algorithms developed in collaboration with the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) and and.

The dataset is updated periodically, as new data becomes available, see our data.