Police and Human Rights Resources
This website is an initiative of the Police and Human Rights Programme (PHRP) of the Dutch Section of Amnesty International. Its aim is to create an online space where relevant human rights publications, standards and legal instruments applicable to law enforcement are collected and can be easily accessed. The materials contained herein do not necessarily reflect the views of Amnesty International.
The Police and Human Rights Resources hosts a Publications & Reports section which is divided into International Publications and Amnesty Country Reports. International Publications contains relevant publications from recognized international institutions, bodies and organisations working in the field of policing and human rights. Amnesty Country Reports contains reports by Amnesty International that focus on policing or police related topics in specific countries, as well as submissions to international bodies which include police relevant topics. COVID-19 Related Issues is a newly created section which contains relevant documents and publications around law enforcement in times of COVID-19. All three sections can be browsed either by using the search bar or by selecting the different categories in which they are subdivided: content, date and source or resource type and country respectively.
The Domestic Legal Documents section collects relevant documents that provide police-related national legislation. They are not presented as good practices nor their inclusion on this website should be understood as a judgment of (or an appreciation for) State compliance with international human rights standards. They are collected for the sole purpose of facilitating research for any individual or organisation working on policing issues. This section is divided in sub-pages which cover five geographic regions. It incorporates national legislation that was previously available on the website www.use-of-force.info (deactivated in July 2016), which was maintained by the Office of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. There is no search function for this page, but there is a list of countries and their domestic legislation in alphabetical order.
The International Legal Documents section contains treaty and non-treaty law relevant to policing, stemming from the United Nations and regional organisations. There also is a ‘Treaty interpretation’ subsection, which contains general comments and recommendations from international and regional treaty-monitoring bodies and monitoring mechanisms.There is no search function for these pages, but the documents are divided into treaty law, treaty interpretation and non-treaty law and listed in alphabetical order.
The International Decisions section contains relevant decisions from international and regional human rights bodies, such as court judgements and individual decisions from monitoring bodies and human rights commissions. This section can be searched by using the search bar or by selecting one of the subcategories (content, date, country and source).
The Police and Human Rights Resources is in constant development and will be continuously updated. We would welcome and value any document shared with us to be added on this website. Furthermore, please do not hesitate to provide any feedback, comment or suggestion you might have on the website and its content by sending an email to phrp@amnesty.nl.