The Universal Periodic Review and the Special Procedures: Weird Picasso Abstraction or a Thought-Out Drawing?

Summary The international human rights system became massive and often difficult to understand even for lawyers themselves. Do we really need different human rights organisations operating both worldwide and locally, dozens of human rights treaties and monitoring bodies? The present paper focuses on the relation between the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council (SP), two mechanisms that may, at the first sight seem largely overlapping in their purpose and, yet, pulling in opposite directions, causing more confusion than bringing benefits. I assert that despite the thematic and jurisdictional overlap of the mechanisms, the UPR and the SP are largely complementary and the existence of both necessary..