Unrecognised states and overseas territories at the UN Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review

Frederick Cowell

Chapter 8 in Human Rights Accountability of Non-Universally Recognised States and State-Like Entities, 2026, pp 155-176 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The Universal Periodic Review (‘UPR’) is a mechanism of the UN Human Rights Council, which conducts reviews, on a four-year cycle, of all states’ human rights records. Because it was set up as a peer-review mechanism of states, with states recognising each other as peers, unrecognised states, overseas territories and other state-like entities are often in the margins of other states’ reviews. This chapter analyses how the UPR reviews the human rights record of state-like entities. The governments of these entities, this chapter argues, often have considerable power over the realisation of human rights within the territory they govern. Consequently, the review of their human rights record is often highly contingent on the parent state. However, as this chapter concludes, the UPR's more flexible structure, compared to human rights treaty bodies, means it can cover issues which might otherwise not be considered.

Keywords: Universal Periodic Review; UN Human Rights Council; Overseas territories; Unrecognised states; Human rights treaty bodies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035365128
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