The UN Human Rights Accountability Mechanisms: The Universal Periodic Review

The Diplomacy Training Program (DTP) and the Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors (STARTTS) are organising a special series of webinars to build awareness of human rights. This webinar is the second in a series to introduce participants to the key accountability mechanisms established through the UN to hold states accountable to their human rights commitments. The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a way for UN Member States to review the human rights records of all other Member States every four and a half years.

UPR sessions take place in Geneva three times a year. Each government is expected to report on their actions to improve the human rights in their countries and what they are doing to overcome the challenges identified in previous UPRs. While only governments are allowed to make recommendations for improvements, civil society has the opportunity to influence governments to make recommendations to the government under review. The UPR process can unite NGOs working on diverse human rights issues. Australia is scheduled to transmit its report by October this year, to be reviewed at the January 2026 session of the UPR.

The two speakers have wide experience in human rights advocacy. Joshua Cooper has attended numerous UPR sessions and has collaborated with civil society organisations in their UPR advocacy. He outlined the nature of this advocacy and the opportunities provided to hold governments accountable – and unite people for rights. Oliver Ray is coordinating Australia’s UPR shadow report for the Kingsford Legal Centre. He spoke on the process of coordinating the civil society report and highlighted its main concerns.

Speakers

Joshua Cooper has been serving as a trainer at DTP for over a decade. Joshua teaches at the University of Hawai’i and is currently the Director of the Hawai’i Institute for Human Rights and CEO of the GOOD Group. He also served as the co-Chair for the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Task Force at the US Human Rights Network and is a steering committee member at the U.S. Human Rights Cities Alliance.

Oliver Ray is a law reform solicitor at the Kingsford Legal Centre and a member of the coordinating committee for the NGO coalition report to Australia’s fourth UPR. He was a senior legal policy advisor at Equality Australia where he worked on state-based bans on conversion practices, legal gender recognition reforms, and protections against hate and discrimination for LGBTIQ+ people. He has also worked as a strategic litigation solicitor at Grata Fund, climate and democracy campaigner at GetUp and human rights fellow at Legal Aid NSW.