Review of literature on national human rights institutions

A lot of academic literature on national human rights institutions (NHRIs) has been published in English the past decade. This literature supplements other sources such as official documents, reports from NHRIs or other actors within national, regional, and international human rights protection systems.

The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of the available literature on NHRIs and to disseminate the main issues and discussions raised in that literature. The idea here is to draw a roadmap that will allow interested readers to navigate in the wealth of information, sources and approaches.

The review renders an overall account of the theoretical dimension of the publications on NHRIs as well as of the empirical material and analysis to be found in that literature. The main research questions and conclusions have been mapped out. A complete bibliography is annexed to this review.