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31 March 2025
Authored by Adam Day and Emma Bapt, our recent two-part research series explores how the United Nations' human rights system can enhance its role in early warning and conflict prevention.
The first brief, 'From Signals to Action – How the UN Human Rights System Can Deliver Early Warning and Conflict Prevention', examines how human rights data from the UN system can signal rising risks of violent conflict. Through case studies of Syria, Mali, South Sudan, Ukraine, and Myanmar, the report highlights how the UN’s human rights system already generates a wealth of information that clearly indicates growing risks of violent conflict. However, many of these signals were buried in long reports or spread out across different bodies of information that made them difficult to access or understand. The research also found that:
Building on these findings, the second brief, 'Operationalizing Prevention – How the UN Human Rights System Can Connect Early Warning to Action', shifts the focus to actionable steps for turning these signals into preventive measures and offers concrete policy recommendations. It identifies critical gaps including:
By addressing these challenges, the report underscores how the Human Rights Council (HRC) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) can play a more decisive role in preventing large-scale human rights violations and violent conflicts.
As the UN prepares for the 2025 Peacebuilding Architecture Review, these insights offer a timely roadmap for enhancing global peace and security efforts.
These papers forms part of a larger research on human rights and prevention - exploring how the human rights system can serve as a tool in conflict prevention, resilience and early warning.
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Our research brief, Neurotechnology and Human Rights: An Audit of Risks, Regulatory Challenges, and Opportunities, examines the human rights implications of neurotechnology in both therapeutic and commercial applications.
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A new working paper, 'AI Decoded: Key Concepts and Applications of Artificial Intelligence for Human Rights and SDG Monitoring', has been published by the Geneva Human Rights Platform.
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This seminar explores how national mechanisms for implementation, reporting and follow-up can better integrate the capacities, data, and experiences of local and regional governments in advancing human rights implementation and reporting.
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The event, as part of the AI for Good Summit 2025 will explore how AI tools can support faster data analysis, help uncover patterns in large datasets, and expand the reach of human rights work.
Participants in this training course will be introduced to the major international and regional instruments for the promotion of human rights, as well as international environmental law and its implementation and enforcement mechanisms.
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This training course will explore the origin and evolution of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and its functioning in Geneva and will focus on the nature of implementation of the UPR recommendations at the national level.
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This initiative wishes to contribute to better and more coordinated implementation, reporting and follow-up of international human rights recommendations through a global study on digital human rights tracking tools and databases.
Geneva Academy
Geneva Academy