The Universal Rights Group (URG) is a small, independent think tank dedicated to analysing and strengthening global human rights policy. It is the only such institution in Geneva and the only think tank in the world focusing exclusively on human rights.

The goal of the organisation is to strengthen policy-making and policy-implementation in the international human rights system by providing rigorous yet accessible, timely and policy-relevant research, analysis and recommendation, a forum for discussion and debate on important human rights issues facing the international community, and a window onto the work of the Human Rights Council and its mechanisms ? a window designed to promote transparency, accountability, awareness and effectiveness.

A key aspect of this goal is to make the international human rights system more accessible to, and to bring it into closer orbit with, policy-makers at regional, national and local levels, as well as with human rights defenders and the victims of human rights violations.

Mission

?To generate progress towards the full realisation of the rights and freedoms contained in the universal human rights instruments through solutions-based policy research and forward-looking policy prescription, and through offering a respected platform for information-sharing and dialogue?.
The URG?s work is organised around four broad programmes. Individual projects are organised under these four programmes. The Board of Trustees, meeting at least once a year, sets the programme of work. The four programmes are:

1. In focus: human rights and religion
2. International human rights institutions, mechanisms and processes
3. Contemporary and emerging human rights issues
4. Beyond the Council ? human rights protection outside the main Geneva-based international human rights institutions and mechanisms

In addition to these main programmes, URG also undertakes a number of other stand-alone projects designed to support the UN human rights pillar. These include the organisation of the Glion Human Rights Dialogue - a two-day retreat for senior policy-makers; pre Human Rights Council session press breakfasts; regular inter-sessional retreats and brainstorming sessions with Council members; ?Council reports? summarising the outcome of regular Council sessions; and the publication of opinion-editorial style articles by senior policymakers.

In its program 3, the Universal Rights Group focuses on the issue of integrating a human rights based approach to the post 2015 development agenda and the future SDGs, The Universal Rights Group has been producing articles and policy papers on how human rights could be integrated in the future SDGs and has been part of the Beyond 2015 campaign to ensure that URG organised a regional consultation at UNEP Geneva bringing together 18 EHRDs from Africa and Europe, plus relevant international organisations, mechanisms and NGOs including the UN Independent Expert on human rights and the environment, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, the UN Special Rapporteur on toxic waste, OHCHR, UNEP, Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, WWF International, Article 19, Amnesty International, the International Service for Human Rights, Global Witness, International Land Coalition, Earthjustice, Justlaw and Waterlex.

In January 2015, URG launched its Policy Report on the Council?s resolutions system at an event hosted by the Permanent Mission of Australia. The event included a panel discussion with the President of the Human Rights Council, the Chief of the OHCHR research division, FIDH and the Ambassador of Australia. There were around 100 participants. URG has also presented the findings of the Report at events in New York (April, with the Chair of the Third Committee and the President of the Council) and Washington DC (also April, with US-based NGOs, think tanks, US State Departments officials and congressional staffers). URG also held private round tables at the US Embassy in Geneva with NGOs, residence of the Mexican Permanent Representative, with key countries, the African Group and Like Minded Group in Geneva.

The Policy Report and its findings have made a significant contribution to changing thinking about Council resolutions and methods of work. The so-called ?efficiency? of the Council and its outputs is now a major area of work in Geneva and New York, and is one of the three priority issues for the German Presidency of the Council. The issue featured prominently in the three policy dialogues held ahead of Glion II (see below), and was the focus of an informal ambassadorial retreat hosted by the Government of Germany in Berlin in May 2015. URG presented its ideas and recommendations at that retreat. Some of those ideas (e.g. inter-sessional briefings by the High Commissioner, a voluntary pledge on methods of work, a multiannual calendar of initiatives, and an new informal consultation process on the ?review, rationalisation and improvement? of mandates) are being taken forward by relevant stakeholders.

URG has been organising and participating on several policy dialogues and events on post 2015 development agenda and human rights and has been engaging with the co-facilitators of the negotiating process for the future SDGs with the aim to ensure that human rights is integrated in the post 2015 development agenda

More details on URG events can be accessed at www.universal-rights.org YES - Board of Trustees:

Honorary President, President Ramos-Horta (Timor-Leste), Chairperson, Dr. Ahmed Shaheed (Maldives),former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Maldives; Vice-Chair, Professor Michael O?Flaherty (Ireland), Ms. Asma Jahangir (Pakistan), Sir Nigel Rodley (UK), Dr. Nazila Ghanea-Hercock (Iran), ; Professor Juan Mendez (Argentina), UN Special Rapporteur on torture; Professor John Knox (US), UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment; Professor Abdullahi An Na?im (Sudan), senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Law and Religion, former Executive Director of Human Rights Watch (Africa); Justice Sophia A. B. Akuffo (Ghana), President and Judge of the African Court of Human and People?s Rights; Professor Dan Magraw (US), President Emeritus of the Centre for International Environmental Law; Professor Paul Hunt (NZ), former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, former member of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Ms. Yasmin Sooka (South Africa), Executive Director of the Foundation for Human Rights in South Africa; and Professor Heiner Bielefeld (Germany), UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion, Ms. Catarina de Albuquerque, former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to water and sanitation

Advisory Committee

Dr. (Ms.) Basak Cali (Turkey), Associate Professor at Koç University, Turkey;
Mr. Malcolm Langford (Norway), Director of the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Programme at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, Oslo, Norway; Professor (Ms.) Elizabeth Griffin (UK), Professor and Executive Director at Global Jindal University, New Delhi, India; Mr. Rolf Ring (Sweden), Deputy Director of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at Lund University, Sweden; Dr. (Ms.) Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona (Chile), United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights; Professor (Mr.) Frans Viljoen (South Africa), Director at the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, South Africa; Mr. Scott Sheeran (New Zealand), Senior Lecturer and Director of the LLM in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law programme at the University of Essex, UK; Mr. Roland Chauville (France), Executive Director of UPR Info (NGO), Geneva, Switzerland; Dr. (Ms.) Elvira Dominguez-Redondo (Spain), Senior Lecturer in Law at Middlesex University, UK; Ms. Julie de Rivero (Peru, UK); Mr. Nick Cumming-Bruce (UK), Geneva-based journalist contributing to the IHT and the New York Times; Dr. (Ms.) Rosa Freedman, author of The United Nations Human Rights Council: an early assessment (March 2013); Mr. Peter Splinter (Canada), Amnesty International Representative to the United Nations in Geneva; Professor (Mr.) George E. Edwards (USA), Director of the Programme in International Human Rights Law, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law; and Dr. (Ms.) Rose Nakayi (Uganda), Director, Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC), School of Law, Makerere University, Uganda. Ms. Julie Gromellon (France), former Permanent Representative of FIDH to the UN; Professor Michael Ramsden (UK), Chinese University of Hong Kong; Dr. Sejal Parmar (UK), Central European University, Budapest; Ms. Heather Blake (UK), former UK Director, Reporters without Borders
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