One way in which the WEA Geneva office promotes human rights, particularly religious freedom, is through written submissions to the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process. Every member state of the United Nations (UN) comes up for review every 4.5 years. It is called a “peer review” process because other member states make recommendations for improving human rights in the country under review.
The first step in this UPR process is an invitation to civil society, including organizations like the WEA, to submit written reports and recommendations. We send our list of recommendations to each member state, and we often see states use our recommendations.
We work actively with our national and regional alliances on these submissions, as they are directly involved in advocating to their governments about the issues affecting their churches and their country. Our voice amplifies those of national alliances at the international level.
Deadlines for these submissions come up three times a year. In the most recent round, with a deadline of July 17, we made submissions on Australia, Austria, Georgia and Rwanda. Each round includes 14 states, but we do not have the capacity to make submissions on all of them.
After each UPR round is completed, we evaluate our effectiveness to see if our issues are in the final report. We usually find that at least one state has made a recommendation similar to, or even based on, our recommendations. This gives our national alliance the ability to raise that issue with their government and seek positive changes.
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