Charter Institutions

Charter bodies include the Human Rights Council (the former Commission on Human Rights), and Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Charter-based bodies derive their establishment from provisions contained in the Charter of the United Nations, they hold broad human rights mandates, address an unlimited audience, and take action based on majority voting.

The Human Rights Council is an intergovernmental body, which meets in Geneva, and is composed of 47 elected UN Member States. The Human Rights Council is a forum empowered to promote and protect of all human rights around the globe. UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) provides substantive support for the meetings of the Human Rights Council, and follow-up to the Council's deliberations. However, the Human Rights Council is a separate entity from OHCHR.

Human Rights Council Complaint Procedure was established to address consistent patterns of gross and reliably attested violations of all human rights and all fundamental freedoms occurring in any part of the world and under any circumstances. The complaint procedure addresses communications submitted by individuals, groups, or non-governmental organizations that claim to be victims of human rights violations or that have direct, reliable knowledge of such violations.

Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council are mechanisms to address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. The Special Procedures mandates usually call on mandate-holders to examine, monitor, advise and publicly report on human rights situations in specific countries or territories, or on human rights issues of particular concern worldwide.

With the support of the OHCHR, special procedures: undertake country visits; act on individual cases of reported violations and concerns of a broader nature by sending communications to States and others; conduct annual thematic studies; seek information from calls for input and convene expert consultations; contribute to the development of international human rights standards; and engage in advocacy, raise public awareness, and provide advice for technical cooperation.

All report to the Human Rights Council on their findings and recommendations, and many also report to the General Assembly. They are sometimes the only mechanism that will alert the international community to certain human rights issues, as they can address situations in all parts of the world without the requirement for countries to have had ratified a human rights instrument.

As of November 2023, there are 46 thematic mandates and 12 country mandates.

The UN Human Rights (OHCHR) supports the work of rapporteurs, independent experts and working groups through its Special Procedures Branch (SPB) which services all but one of the thematic mandates and provides centralised support to the Special Procedures as a system.