Paper short abstract:

This presentation draws on recently completed research which ethnographically explores the Universal Periodic Review, a new human rights monitoring mechanism at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, as a public audit ritual, constituted through specific encounters, institutional codes, norms and knowledge practices, and documentary processes.

Paper long abstract:

Prompted by the Human Rights Commission's alleged "politicization", the UN human rights system underwent a major institutional reform and was replaced by the new Human Rights Council in 2006. The new system includes an innovative new mechanism, launched in 2008: the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a state-led peer scrutiny of the "human rights performance" of each of the United Nation's 192 member states. UPR is envisaged as a "cooperative process" where each state is reviewed in "an objective, transparent, non-selective, constructive, non-confrontational and non-politicized manner" that guarantees "universal coverage and equal treatment of all states". This presentation draws on recently completed research which ethnographically explores UPR as a public audit ritual, constituted through specific encounters, institutional codes, norms and knowledge practices, and documentary processes. Specifically, the focus will be upon the terms through which the UPR describes itself (i.e., the terms used by the architects of UPR and agreed by state parties) and which are being actively promulgated as new norms of international practice. These terms are familiar from myriad national and international institutional contexts which have been subjected to processes of "New Public Management". The purpose will be to explore the multifarious effects of these new norms upon the practices surrounding UPR as multiple actors bring their diverse, and often antithetical, goals and projects to this UN process, attempting variously to make it work and to limit or subvert it. In this way, I shall begin to unpack its complex politics, etiquette, civilities, affects and ethics.