Utrecht’s SIM library of human rights jurisprudence has been reborn

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UNhumanrightsUN Human Rights Office launches database from the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) at the Utrecht University School of Law, named Jurisprudence. It contains case law issued by the UN human rights expert committees known as the Treaty Bodies.

The Treaty Bodies are committees of independent experts that monitor implementation of the core international human rights treaties. There are 10 of them including the Committee against Torture, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the Committee on Enforced Disappearances and the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

The database was developed using data from the SIM. Due to budget restrictions, the SIM stopped updating the database  from 1 January 2014 and took it offline on 1 January 2015. However, the SIM offered its data free of charge to the UN Human Rights Office.

Cases are indexed by various categories, including State, date, subject and keywords, which can all be used as search criteria.