UPR Pittsburgh

2024-2025 Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Pittsburgh

In 2025, the United States is once again participating in the comprehensive human rights peer review process via the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process.

Pittsburgh Human Rights City Alliance is holding a series of community forums on human rights topics to raise awareness of local conditions, stimulate conversation, and foster engagement in the drafting of our civil society submission, which is due in early April 2025.

Countering Racist Campaigning & Building Inclusive Communities for All. Wednesday, October 30th, 5:30-7:30pm, Hill District Community Engagement Center

How can we work together to resist today’s “divide and conquer” campaigning and stand in solidarity with our immigrant neighbors? In conversation with members of our local immigrant communities and human rights experts, this forum explores how we can use human rights law to build a city for everyone and meaningfully address the racist politics of scapegoating.

Panel participants: Carlos Blanco, Community Representative,Casa San Jose; Hetal Dhagat, Senior Attorney, Education Law Center, Karim Alshurafa, Spokesperson, Palestinian Community in Pittsburgh; Zainab Adisa, Panel Moderator & Racial Equity Fellow, Allegheny County Department of Human Services

Housing & Human Rights: A Community Forum. Saturday, November 9th, 10:30am-12:30pm, East Liberty Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

The human right to housing is well established in international law, yet many residents in our region suffer from housing insecurity, poor quality housing, and homelessness. How can we work together to promote and protect housing as a human right? How can international human rights law be a resource to advance work for housing rights in our city? This community forum will shape our local advocacy and inform a report for the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of human rights in the United States. Come learn about current housing rights issues in our region and how we can build local solutions and use international law to strengthen our efforts. This meeting is part of a series of community forums on human rights to help build awareness and strengthen our collective work to bring human rights home.

Panel participants: Muhammad Ali Nasir (MAN-E), Community Care and Resistance in Pittsburgh (CCRIP) & Allegheny County’s Just Home project;Bob Damewood, Regional Housing Legal Services;Rachel Shepherd, PCity of Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations; Leeretta Payne, Human Rights City Alliance

2019-2020 Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Pittsburgh

In 2019-2020, the United States participated in a comprehensive human rights assessment through the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process. Created by the UN Human Rights Council in 2006, the UPR process involves a periodic review (every 4.5 years) of the human rights record in all 193 member states. The goal of the UPR process is to improve the enjoyment of human rights in all states by prompting, supporting, and expanding the promotion and protection of human rights on the ground. The UPR Working Group met in Geneva in November 2020 to review US submissions.

Pittsburgh human rights advocates collaborated with other Human Rights Cities to provide documentation and recommendations for this review of the US human rights record (See: UPR Cities Project). As part of this work, local advocates produced and submitted to the UN a UPR report on the state of human rights in Pittsburgh.

The analyses and recommendations contained in this report help to promote public awareness and policy responses to our regional human rights conditions and to build political will — i.e., a broad-based political constituency that is vocal and active in support and defense of human rights for all residents. A key goal of the UPR Cities initiative is movement-building to build the political will, skills, and collective momentum to carry out these recommendations and re-orient our community so that human rights are the top priority— not a by-product of economic growth and conventional “development.” We want UPR Report to support the ongoing work by community and grassroots organizations and to broaden our networks of mutual support and cooperation for human rights.

2019 Pittsburgh UPR Task Force

• Alliance for Police Accountability
• Casa San Jose
• Green Party of Allegheny County
• Hill District Consensus Group
• Pittsburgh for CEDAW
• Pittsburgh Human Rights City Alliance
• Just Harvest
• City of Pittsburgh Human Relations Commission & Gender Equity Commission
• Urbankind Institute
• Others

Submissions to the United Nations

• Pittsburgh UPR Report (Full Version), Racial Inequity at the Core of Human Rights Challenges in Pittsburgh
• Pittsburgh UPR Report, 2-Page Summary
• Pittsburgh joins other US Cities in UN Report "Corporate Influence Threatens Human Rights in Communities Nationwide"
• Executive Summary of United States Civil Society Reports, submitted by US Human Rights Network

Community Forums

The 2019 UPR Pittsburgh Task Force held a series of community forums to inform our submission to the United Nations. These forums also served to raise consciousness and build community engagement around human rights advocacy.

• August, 2019: Immigrant and Refugee Rights
• September, 2019: Housing as a Human Right
• October, 2019: The Human Right to Food
• November, 2019: Health as a Human Right
• December, 2019: Human Rights and Decent Work
• January 25, 2020: Pittsburgh Racial Justice Summit Session: "Bringing Reparations Claims to the United Nations/World Court of Human Rights" (See Reparations Resource Guide)
• Learning from COVID-19: Shaping a Health and Human Rights Agenda for our Region. Alternate Thursdays 4:00-5:30PM (Online) April 30, May 14, May 28, June 11.

National Lobby Days

The UN Universal Periodic Review of the United States human rights record provides an important opportunity to build support for more people-centered national and local policies. Following submission of evidence and reports to the UN as part of this process, Pittsburgh sent delegations of grassroots human rights defenders to lobby UN officials to bring our human rights priorities and recommendations into the official proceedings of the US Universal Periodic Review.

These delegations illustrate the powerful work of grassroots human rights activists to show the international community that US residents believe in human rights and are working hard to “bring them home!” We know from past work that grassroots organizers can have a powerful impact on the thinking of international officials, and the experience of seeing the United Nations in action can help our movements develop creative ideas for using these mechanisms to build power. Working together, we can amplify our voices in the global conversation about how we can improve human rights conditions for more of the world’s people.

UPR Lobby Delegation to Washington DC: February 2020

Casa San José made it possible for us to send a delegation to Washington DC to bring the messages about human rights conditions in our region to embassy representatives advising their governments about the upcoming UN human rights assessment of the United States. Most of our delegation were young people, including two high school students from Casa San José. Pittsburghers for Public Transit, Hill District Consensus Group, Pgh for CEDAW, and the Peoples Campaign for Reparations and Black Self-Determination also sent representatives. The delegates we met were keenly interested in learning about conditions on the ground, and they were also excited to learn of our work to organize nationally around the UPR process. We put forward suggestions for recommendations we hope they will emphasize in the US report, which we can then use as tools for our advocacy.

Pittsburgh Delegation Attends Human Rights City Leadership Summit in Atlanta: May 2023

With support from the Heinz Foundation, a Pittsburgh delegation of over 30 community organizers, advocates, and activists attended the Human Rights City Leadership Summit in Atlanta's Georgia State University College of Law from May 18-21. The delegation convened with UN Officials, civil leaders, and other grassroots organizers to explore innovative policy solutions and good practices to "bring human rights home!" See our Press Release.

Press

• Coalition to U.N.: Human rights in Pittsburgh are lagging for people of color, people with low incomes Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 15 October, 2019
• Pittsburgh files human rights report to the UN & Passes City 'Zero Evictions Day' Proclamation
  • See link to full recording of our press conference announcing UPR report and Zero Evictions Proclamation
  • Press Release: Pittsburgh Joins Global “Zero Evictions Days” & Files Human Rights Report with United Nations
• Immigration rights are human rights, speakers at Downtown forum say Pittsburgh Post-Gazette August 6, 2019. Coverage of our UPR Cities Roundtable on the Rights of Immigrants and Refugees in the Pittsburgh Region.
• Pittsburgh Youth and Community Leaders Travel to Washington DC to Make an “Appeal to the World” for Human Rights February 27, 2020

Cross-City and Global Initiative for Human Rights Cities

• Corporate Influence Threatens Human Rights in Communities Nationwide Common Dreams October 28, 2019
• Bringing Human Rights Home: New Strategies for Local Organizing Open Global Rights, By Jackie Smith & Joshua Cooper-U.S. Human Rights Cities Alliance, August 1, 2018.

• For more details see the UPR Cities Initiative.

Return to Pittsburgh Human Rights City Alliance Page