Human Rights Information Resources

Human Rights Watch conducts investigations of human rights abuses around the world. The staff of 80 investigators actively research and report on more than 90 countries.The Human Rights Watch reports are searchable by country, topic, and date.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR or ECtHR; French: Cour européenne des droits de l’homme) is a supra-national or international court established by the European Convention on Human Rights. The court hears applications alleging that a contracting state has breached one or more of the human rights provisions concerning civil and political rights set out in the Convention and its protocols. An application can be lodged by an individual, a group of individuals, or one or more of the other contracting states. Besides judgments, the Court can also issue advisory opinions. The Convention was adopted within the context of the Council of Europe, and all of its 47 member states are contracting parties to the Convention. The Court is based in Strasbourg, France.

The IACHR is a principal and autonomous organ of the Organization of American States (“OAS”) whose mission is to promote and protect human rights in the American hemisphere. It is composed of seven independent members who serve in a personal capacity. Created by the OAS in 1959, the Commission has its headquarters in Washington, D.C. Together with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (“the Court” or “the I/A Court H.R.), installed in 1979, the Commission is one of the institutions within the inter-American system for the protection of human rights (“IAHRS”).

Find UN documents related to human rights in the DAG Discovery online database. The website contains several finding guides to official UN documents, voting data, speeches, maps, and open access publications. The platform provides access to UN-produced materials in digital format and bibliographic records for print UN documents starting in 1979.

The Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) was founded in 1982 and is part of the Oxford Department of International Development. The website's stated mission is "to build knowledge and understanding of forced migration in order to help improve the lives of some of the world’s most vulnerable people." The Centre's publications on forced migration are linked and freely accessible.

The Center's research and writings on various human rights topics are freely available, the Publications tab contains links to the full text of the Center's publications.

The Human Rights Web Archive is a grant funded digital archive provided by Columbia University Libraries and Information Services (CUL) and its Center for Human Rights Documentation & Research (CHRDR). The purpose of the archive is to select, preserve, and provide access to freely available internet resources concerned with human rights.

"The annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – the Human Rights Reports – cover internationally recognized individual, civil, political, and worker rights, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international agreements. The U.S. Department of State submits reports on all countries receiving assistance and all United Nations member states to the U.S. Congress in accordance with the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Trade Act of 1974." [from the website]