The Future of Human Rights Accountability for Global Health under the Universal Periodic Review

This chapter examines the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a new peer-review procedure that provides scrutiny of each UN member state’s human rights record every five years. The review process culminates in a set of recommendations issued to each “State-under-Review” (SuR). The UPR provides an unprecedented opportunity to routinely hold all states to account for their obligations under international human rights law, including health-related human rights. Health recommendations have featured prominently in the recommendations issued to SuRs and have a comparatively high implementation rate. Data from the UPR indicate that the UPR could have a potentially, or already, important role in holding states to account for health-related human rights as well as political global health commitments, such as those found in the Sustainable Development Goals. However, certain shortcomings should be addressed, including an uneven spread of recommendations across different health issues and limited engagement of the public health community.