The Human Rights Council of the United Nations conducts regular assessment of human rights situation of all UN member states within the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism. The Universal Periodic Review is a unique procedure that provides each UN member state with the opportunity to present the activities undertaken with the aim of improving the state of human rights and fulfilling its internationally assumed obligations. The review is based on a national report prepared by a member state, UN data available to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and information provided by other stakeholders – national human rights institutions such as the Ombudsman, civil society organizations and regional international organizations such as the Council of Europe.
The Universal Periodic Review is a cyclic process that repeats every five years, and during this period the state should do everything it can to fulfill the accepted recommendations in practice by the next review. The outcome of that process is a document that includes a list of all recommendations given to the state under review, as well as the state’s responses on each of the received recommendations. States are responsible for the further implementation of the accepted recommendations. The review of the human rights situation for each member state consists of three stages: preparation for the review and reporting on the implementation of the recommendations undertaken so far, review of the state of human rights in the country with the adoption of the review report, as well as implementation of the recommendations and mid-term reporting.
Currently, the third UPR cycle started in 2017 is ongoing. The 36th session of the Working Group held in November 2020 referred to the the state of human rights in Croatia. As its outcome, Croatia received 224 recommendations in total, out of which it accepted 194 recommendations and noted the remaining 30 recommendations.
Human Rights House Zagreb conducts continuous monitoring and analysis of the implementation of selected recommendations that Croatia received in the third cycle of the Universal Periodic Review. Analysis of the implementation of the selected recommendations is regularly communicated and discussed within various advocacy coordinations of civil society organizations, as well as during meetings with representatives of diplomatic missions of other countries in the Republic of Croatia. An overview of the monitoring of the implementation of the recommendations for the period from January 2021 to July 2022 is available here.
