Created in 1991 by the Commission on Human Rights, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is one of the special procedures of the Human Rights Council. The special procedures are independent human rights experts, or groups of experts, with mandates to report and advise on human rights from a thematic or country-specific perspective. The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, comprising five experts, has the thematic mandate to investigate cases of detention alleged to be imposed arbitrarily or otherwise inconsistently with international human rights standards.

Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights has submitted petitions to the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on behalf of human rights activists across Africa and Asia who have been unlawfully arrested and detained by repressive regimes in retaliation for exercising their rights to freedom of opinion and expression. Some of the cases we have represented include Egyptian anti-torture protestor Mahmoud Hussein, who was first arrested in 2014 for wearing a t-shirt with the slogan, “a nation without torture,” while on his way home from a peaceful demonstration; the real-life “Hotel Rwanda” hero Paul Rusesabagina, who was abducted, detained for 969 days, and denied access to his lawyers; and Omoyele “Yele” Sowore, the founder of Sahara Reporters, a citizen journalism news site focused on exposing corruption, human rights abuses, and other political misconduct in Nigeria.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is the body of independent experts that monitors implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by its States parties. The Committee is composed of 18 independent experts and holds regular thematic discussions on issues related to racial discrimination and the Convention.

In August 2022, ahead of the Committee’s review of the United States’ compliance with the treaty, representatives from RFK Human Rights and the Haitian Bridge Alliance spoke about the continual systemic mistreatment of Black migrants at the border and beyond. The testimony followed the organizations’ joint report, submitted in July 2022, which argued that U.S. immigration and refugee laws, regulations, policies, and practices subject Black non-citizens to racially discriminatory treatment.

Established in March 2006 by the UN General Assembly, the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a unique mechanism of the Human Rights Council that calls for each UN Member State to undergo a peer review of its human rights records every 4.5 years. Since the first periodic review in 2008, all 193 UN Member States have been reviewed three times, allowing them to:

• Report on the actions it has taken to improve the human rights situations in their countries and to overcome challenges to the enjoyment of human rights; and
• Receive recommendations – informed by multi-stakeholder input and pre-session reports – from UN Member States for continuous improvement.

RFK Human Rights has submitted UPR reports for Egypt, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cameroon, Bangladesh, Cuba, and Western Sahara to document human rights violations, assess the implementation of recommendations received during the previous cycle, and provide specific and action-oriented recommendations.