The year 2026 will mark the twentieth anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), a milestone that offers an important opportunity for reflection, critique, and forward-thinking analysis. Since its inception in 2006, the Council has become a central organ of the international human rights system: producing resolutions, convening special sessions, mandating investigations, and serving as a global forum for the contestation and articulation of human rights norms through its innovative peer review mechanism, the Universal Periodic Review. Yet it has also faced sustained criticism for politicization and variable impact.
This edited volume will bring together interdisciplinary scholarship to assess the evolution, performance, and future of the UNHRC at this critical juncture. We invite contributions that critically examine the Council’s role in global governance, its successes and failures, and its capacity to navigate an increasingly multipolar and fragmented international landscape.

Dr Michael Lane and Dr Amna Nazir are currently inviting submissions for chapters for an edited collection that will reflect on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) as it approaches its 20th anniversary. The working title is ‘Charting the Council’s Future: Reflections on the United Nations Human Rights Council at Twenty’.   

The collection will bring together interdisciplinary scholarship to assess the evolution, performance, and future of the UNHRC at this critical juncture. Academics, researchers, civil society representatives, and civil servants (e.g. UN staff) are all welcome to contribute. We are particularly keen to receive contributions from early career researchers and those from the Global South.

Find the details here: Charting the Council’s Future. Reflections on the United Nations Human Rights Council at Twenty CfP