Universal Rights Group’s groundbreaking new policy report on national mechanisms for implementation, reporting, and follow-up (NMIRFs) addresses head-on, and for the first time, one of the great unanswered questions of the international human rights system: namely, how do States, the duty-bearers of that system, implement the recommendations they receive from the three main UN human rights mechanisms (Special Procedures, Treaty Bodies, and the UPR), thereby bringing national laws, policies, and practices into ever greater alignment with their obligations under international human rights law? Specifically, the report charts the rise and rapid development of NMIRFs, as the international community’s powerful new tool to finally bridge the long-standing ‘implementation gap’ between universal human rights norms and local realities.Part 1 of the report examines the early history of NMIRFs, explains what they are, and explores how and why they represent such a powerful new means of strengthening implementation, impact measurement, and periodic reporting. The report recalls, in that regard, that most world-class NMIRFs have been established in developing countries, especially in SIDS and LDCs.

The rest of the report presents the findings of a major global survey of national implementation systems (including NMIRFs), covering 83 UN member States from all regions. Based on survey responses collated by URG between 2021-2022, then validated and updated in late 2023, the report proposes a classification system of State implementation-reporting systems into four main ‘types.’ Taking the analysis one step further, the different systems are then ‘mapped’ based on their degree of institutionalisation and sophistication.

The policy report then uses national case studies to illustrate each of the identified ‘types’ of implementation-reporting system. Finally, the report presents a sectoral or horizontal analysis of key characteristics of all the implementation-reporting systems surveyed, in order to identify good practices, and understand the key ‘ingredients’ or ‘building blocks’ of effective national implementation-reporting systems or mechanisms.