The UPR Project at BCU has engaged with Cycles Three and Four of the USA’s UPR.
The UPR Project’s inaugural stakeholder submission was submitted to the USA’s Cycle Three review in 2019, focusing upon capital punishment, climate change, and compassionate release for prisoners. The report was subsequently cited by the UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights and informed recommendations made by Member States to the USA.
In April 2025, the UPR Project at BCU submitted two joint stakeholder submissions to the USA’s Cycle Four UPR. The first report focused on capital punishment. The second report was submitted in conjunction with the University of Worcester and Pace University, and focusing on climate change and abortion.
Cycle Four: 2025
Capital Punishment Report
This report, led by Professor Jon Yorke, focuses on capital punishment. This submission focuses on capital punishment. We make recommendations focusing upon the necessity for abolition of the death penalty and urge the US government to fulfil in good faith its obligations under the Charter of the United Nations (U.N. Charter)5 and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
Researchers
- Professor Jon Yorke
- Dr Alice Storey
- Dr Amna Nazir
- BCU Law Research Students: Freya Cox, Thomas Plant, Samira Ahmed, Angel Ene, and Farhat Nawaz
- PGDL Student at the University of Law, Esther Coomber.
Climate change and Abortion report (Joint with the University of Worcester and Pace University)
This Joint report focuses on climate change and abortion. The joint report makes recommendations to the US government. The implementation of the recommendations would see the U.S move towards achieving UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 calls for urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts and SDG 5 which aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
Researchers
- BCU: Dr Alice Storey, Ms Stella Mguli, Dr Anne Richardson Oakes, Ms Sabah Athar, Ms Melisa Oleschuk, Dr Love Alfred, Dr Ilaria di Gioia, Dr Amna Nazir, Prof. Sarah Cooper, Dr Rebecca Smyth, and Prof. Jon Yorke
- University of Worcester: Dr Michael Lane.
- Pace University: Prof. Lissa Griffin
- BCU Student: Anne-Alexa Stanica
Cycle Three: 2019
In September 2019, The UPR Project at BCU submitted its inaugural Stakeholder Report to the USA’s third cycle UPR, which took place in the Human Rights Council in November 2020. This submission was jointly compiled with The Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, New York. It focused on three areas of expertise with the School of Law, namely:
- Capital punishment
- Climate change
- Compassionate release for prisoners
It makes specific recommendations to the USA as to how it can improve its adherence to international human rights standards on these three issues.
Download the 2019 Stakeholder Report
On 6 March 2020, our report was cited by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the Stakeholder Summary to support the findings of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in their observations on fossil fuels and the oil and gas industry (FN38) and in the need for the US to reinstate the Paris Agreement (FN43). Furthermore, our report was cited to support the American Civil Liberties Union's observations on the jurisdictional use of the death penalty (FN63) and in regard to Amnesty International's claims regarding miscarriages of justice in death penalty cases (FN66).
Member States recommended that the US should reinstate the Paris Agreement (Recommending States: Slovenia (26.64); Fiji (26.65); Spain (26.77)). These Member State recommendations are consistent with the points specified by the UPR Project at BCU’s Stakeholder Report, and the Biden Administration has since reversed the decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement regarding climate change.
About the UPR Project at BCU
The Centre for Human Rights (CHR) has been engaging with the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) since 2016. Under the auspice of the Human Rights Council, the UPR is an intergovernmental process providing a review of the human rights record of all Member States.
Through the UPR Project at BCU, the CHR we engage with the UPR through taking part in the UPR Pre-sessions, providing capacity building for UPR stakeholders and National Human Rights Institutions, and the filing of stakeholder reports in selected sessions. The UPR Project is designed to help meet the challenges facing the safeguarding of human rights around the world, and to help ensure that UPR recommendations are translated into domestic legal change in member state parliaments.
We fully support the UPR ethos of encouraging the sharing of best practice globally to protect everyone's human rights. The UPR Project at BCU engages with the UPR regularly as a stakeholder, having submitted numerous reports and been cited by the OHCHR.