International Justice Resource Center

Online Resource Hub: IJRC publishes a daily compilation of human rights headlines, regular news articles on significant developments in the enjoyment or protection of human rights globally, and a calendar and monthly overviews of the regional and universal human rights bodies' activities. Additionally, IJRC continued to add to its collection of two-page factsheets on countries' regional and universal human rights obligations. Among other updates, IJRC produced a new version of the Guide to Researching International Human Rights Law. In 2020, IJRC compiled and updated a list of supranational human rights bodies' guidance to States on respecting human rights while addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. This list has been used, or referred to, by many other organizations and entities, including the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In external publications, IJRC staff wrote about the pandemic's consequences on the functioning of these bodies. The Online Resource Hub readership grew again in 2020, by more than 7%, with an particularly noticeable increase in readers from Pakistan, South Africa, Greece, Slovakia, Belarus, Namibia, Afghanistan, Dominica, Tajikistan, Samoa, East Timor, Bermuda, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Gabon, Nauru, Monaco, Sao Tome and Principe, and the Congo. Additionally, as courses moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, IJRC noticed an increase in incoming traffic from universities and online educational portals around the world. IJRC's Online Resource Hub content continued to be cited in academic publications, news articles, library research guides, and other materials. In 2020, these included The Washington Post, VICE Magazine, more than 100 scholarly articles, widely-read online publications such as Just Security and Jurist, as well as press releases and other outputs from human rights mechanisms themselves.

Advocacy Support: In continuation of its work providing advice and technical assistance to advocates and victims, IJRC continued to advise individuals and organizations on their engagement with United Nations and regional bodies human rights in 2020. In connection with this guidance, IJRC staff published articles on forced sterilization as a human rights violation, including in the United States and China.

Advancing Accessibility: IJRC's work to study, and increase, the accessibility, strength, and transparency of supranational human rights bodies continued in 2020. IJRC conducted extensive research on human rights bodies' information management practices, as well as the impact of the pandemic on their functioning and accessibility. This work builds on and will help continue to shape IJRC's draft Declaration on Online Access to Human Rights Information, among other initiatives. IJRC provided information on the 2020 elections of regional human rights bodies, as well as overviews of their election processes, in order to increase transparency of these bodies' composition.

Trainings: In its work to train human rights defenders and other actors in the international human rights system, IJRC organized a virtual panel on the human right to housing. The June 2020 event featured local and global perspectives on using a human rights framework to advocate for the rights of unhoused people and a universal right to housing.