How to use the UPR for successful HIV advocacy
How to use the UPR for successful HIV advocacy
Engaging with the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) might sound daunting to many HIV community advocates. For this reason, PITCH organised a series of online trainings for civil society organisations to understand and use the UPR as an important mechanism in their advocacy.
The purpose of this training was to help partners to understand the UPR process and why it is an important tool to engage with in lobbying with their governments to protect and promote the rights of key and vulnerable populations.
Main facilitator and founder at The East African Centre for Human Rights (EACHRights), Gilbert Onyango supported country partners to develop their individualised country specific UPR roadmap that is based on exactly where each country is on the map. “By developing roadmaps, partners will really think through how they will engage in the process and how to work in coalition with others to make a stronger case,” Gilbert explains. “One of the practical exercises we did was to learn how to navigate the UPR Info website, for instance, and see what coalitions already exist in their country and where shadow reports had been submitted.”
PITCH Country Focal Points, Wanja Ngure (Kenya), Yan Win Soe (Myanmar) and Anthony Nkwocha (Nigeria), shared the successes and challenges they encountered during the 3rd UPR review as part of their PITCH work:
Engaging with international human rights for advocacy is a great way to hold Member States accountable for the promotion and protection of human rights; especially for criminalised populations said Wanja
Resources
- You can access the training presentations for each of the three days here:
- The recordings for Day 1 and Day 3 are available on request, please email nhoeve@aidsfonds.nl if you are interested.
- Also have a look at PITCH research into how much civil society engages with the UPR, where you can learn from the experiences from Indonesia, Uganda and Ukraine.
