The IAJ and the International Accountability Architecture

This page describes the functions the IAJ performs, the international bodies it engages, its work with states, national human rights institutions, and civil society, its report on the state of human rights in the United States, and its long-term goal. It supplements the About page.

What the IAJ Does: The Paris Principles Functions in Practice

The IAJ organizes its work into six functions, corresponding to functions the Paris Principles assign to NHRIs, across the full breadth of human rights obligations binding on the United States.

Independent investigation across all human rights frameworks. The IAJ accepts complaints alleging any violation of human rights obligations by public officials, and accepts information from survivors, families, communities, and third parties. Investigation is conducted independently. Findings are the IAJ’s own institutional conclusions, assessed against all applicable frameworks.
Medico-legal documentation at Istanbul Protocol standard. Trauma-informed and culturally competent interviewing, credibility and arguability assessment aligned with Istanbul Protocol indicators, medical and psychological evaluation where applicable, and documentation of harm in forms meeting international standards recognized by treaty bodies. As is ordinary for bodies working to that standard, the IAJ maintains professional contact with the international community of torture documentation and rehabilitation practitioners, including the IRCT.
Pattern identification and systemic analysis. Aggregated findings by demographic, geographic, institutional, and tactical pattern, mapped against all applicable obligations, to assess the systemic character threshold required for Article 20 and other inquiry mechanisms.
Reporting across the full international accountability architecture. The IAJ submits documentation to the treaty bodies, Special Procedures, Universal Periodic Review, and Inter-American mechanisms described below, through the procedures available to civil society organizations, and reports publicly on the state of human rights in the United States.
Legal-policy analysis and publication. Development and publication of the legal framework grounding the IAJ’s findings. The IAJ Analytical Memorandum is the first in a planned series of analytical publications covering the full treaty landscape.
Education, standard-setting, and government engagement. Model findings, publications, and direct communications with courts, officials, and policymakers, providing independent assessment of human rights compliance and identifying the corrections international standards require.

The Full International Accountability Architecture

The IAJ engages with the complete range of international bodies to which the United States owes human rights accountability — not only the treaty bodies corresponding to ratified conventions, but the broader architecture of UN and inter-American mechanisms available to civil society organizations.

UN Treaty Bodies

The Committee Against Torture (CAT Committee) monitors UNCAT compliance. The IAJ submitted its Preliminary Shadow Report to the Committee in September 2025 and has formally requested initiation of an Article 20 confidential inquiry into the United States. Article 20 proceedings are confidential, and the United States was not among the States reviewed at the Committee’s 83rd session in November 2025.
The Human Rights Committee monitors ICCPR compliance, including Article 7’s prohibition of nonconsensual experimentation, the detention and expulsion guarantees of Articles 9, 10, and 13, and the minority and Indigenous cultural rights of Article 27.
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) monitors ICERD compliance. Its early warning and urgent action procedure, which it has previously applied to the United States in respect of Indigenous land rights, is available where violations against Indigenous peoples or racial and national-origin groups require immediate attention.
The CRPD Committee, the CEDAW Committee, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights monitor conventions the United States has signed but not ratified. Because the United States is not a party, these committees have no reporting or complaints procedure in respect of it; they nonetheless receive civil society information and address the standards at issue in their general comments and thematic work.

The UN Human Rights Council and Universal Periodic Review

The Universal Periodic Review is the broadest available international accountability mechanism, because it reviews states against all human rights obligations, not only those under ratified treaties. The United States did not submit its national report and did not attend its scheduled November 2025 review (Human Rights Watch). The Human Rights Council rescheduled the review to the 53rd session of the UPR Working Group, with consideration of the United States scheduled for November 10, 2026. Stakeholder submissions to the UPR are open to civil society organizations without regard to consultative status, and the IAJ regards both the review and the U.S. government’s refusal to engage with it as matters within its mandate to document and report.

UN Special Procedures and the OHCHR

UN Special Procedures are independent experts mandated by the Human Rights Council to report on specific themes or country situations. Those most directly relevant to the IAJ’s work are the Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; the Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers; the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants; the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence; and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which receives individual communications concerning immigration detention. Special Procedures may conduct country visits, send communications to governments, and issue public statements — all mechanisms the IAJ’s documentation supports. The Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues provide further channels for the IAJ’s Indigenous rights work, in coordination with Indigenous nations and organizations.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) services the treaty bodies and Special Procedures, and is a primary recipient of civil society documentation and a key institutional interlocutor for the IAJ.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)

The IACHR has jurisdiction to receive individual petitions against the United States under the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. It can issue precautionary measures, request information from the U.S. government, hold thematic hearings, publish reports, and adopt country-specific resolutions. Its established record on immigration detention and on the rights of Indigenous peoples in the United States makes it a natural parallel pathway for those areas of the IAJ’s work, particularly where precautionary measures offer faster protection than the UN treaty body process.

International Cooperation and Persuading U.S. Compliance

The IAJ’s mandate includes working with other states, their NHRIs, and the international community to bring multilateral attention to bear on U.S. compliance — including through mechanisms that allow other States Parties to raise compliance concerns directly. Ahead of the 2026 Universal Periodic Review of the United States, the IAJ wrote to the Permanent Missions in Geneva of 186 UN Member States, sending tailored packages to the three States serving as the review’s troika and to sixteen others. The communications to the missions are published on the IAJ’s International page.

Inter-State Complaint Mechanisms

The United States has accepted the inter-state complaint procedure under ICCPR Article 41, which allows another State Party that has made its own Article 41 declaration to bring a complaint before the Human Rights Committee where the United States has failed to fulfill its ICCPR obligations. The United States has also made a declaration under UNCAT Article 21, accepting inter-state communications to the Committee Against Torture on the same reciprocal basis. The IAJ documents violations in a form designed to support such complaints and intends to make that documentation available to States Parties whose concerns extend to conditions within the United States — including states whose nationals are held in U.S. immigration detention or removed from U.S. territory. The Genocide Convention’s route to the International Court of Justice (Article IX) is not available against the United States without its specific consent, because of the U.S. reservation to that article; the Convention nonetheless remains a basis for diplomatic and multilateral action by other states.

Engaging the States that have Formally Contested U.S. Treaty Reservations

Three European States Parties — Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden — formally objected to the United States’ reservation to Article 16 of the Convention against Torture (UNCAT), which limits the U.S. obligation to prevent cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment to conduct prohibited by the U.S. Constitution; the Netherlands and Sweden also addressed certain U.S. understandings, and the Netherlands reserved its position on others. On 26 February 1996, Germany notified the UN Secretary-General of its understanding that the same Article 16 reservation and two U.S. understandings “do not touch upon the obligations of the United States of America as State Party to the Convention.” Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), eleven European States Parties — Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden — filed formal objections to the United States’ reservations. The ICCPR is a separate treaty regime, but it engages the same U.S. claim that existing domestic law suffices and the same peremptory-norm concerns the IAJ’s work addresses. All eleven accordingly have a documented legal interest in U.S. compliance with the ICCPR, and Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden have one under UNCAT as well. The IAJ’s analytical framework — demonstrating that the ratification-era representation underlying the U.S. RUDs, that existing domestic law suffices to implement the Convention, has not been borne out — is directly relevant to each of those states’ legal positions. The IAJ intends to make its documentation and analysis available to those governments and their human rights ministries, and to work with civil society partners and NHRIs in those countries to ensure that U.S. compliance failures are raised in multilateral forums with the authority of those states’ formal treaty objections behind them.

Working with Accredited NHRIs

NHRIs with GANHRI A-status have procedural standing before the Human Rights Council and treaty bodies that civil society organizations do not hold. The IAJ seeks working relationships with accredited NHRIs and their regional networks so that its findings can inform independent NHRI submissions that carry formal weight in UN proceedings — particularly NHRIs in countries whose nationals are affected by U.S. immigration enforcement, and those with established practice on the rights of Indigenous peoples.

Cooperation with Civil Society and Non-Governmental Organizations

Much of the human rights documentation that exists for the United States has been produced by civil society: non-governmental organizations, university human rights clinics, coalitions, and community organizations, many of which have placed their evidence before the UN treaty bodies and the Universal Periodic Review. The IAJ works with that community as a colleague, not a competitor. It reads civil society documentation closely, tests it, builds on it, and contributes its own investigations and analysis in return.

Ahead of the 2026 Universal Periodic Review, the IAJ wrote to thirty-three organizations that had filed or joined stakeholder submissions on the United States or presented at the review’s pre-session, sending most of them an individual response to their submissions together with the IAJ’s Civil-Society Advocacy Brief. It also wrote to the organizations that publicly objected to the United States’ non-participation in its 2025 review, and has catalogued the more than five hundred other organizations named in the U.S. stakeholder record. The IAJ’s emails to the organizations that objected to the 2025 non-participation, the template used for its letters to the stakeholder organizations, its Civil-Society Advocacy Brief, and the register of organizations are published on the IAJ’s International page.

The IAJ cooperates with civil society on the same terms it applies to every source: it gives each organization’s evidence a fair reading, credits it where it relies on it, and states its own conclusions independently.

Reporting on the State of Human Rights in the United States

On 25 October 2026 the IAJ issued its first national human rights report, State of Human Rights in the United States of America, performing a reporting function of the kind the Paris Principles assign to national human rights institutions. The report reads the record assembled for the Universal Periodic Review by civil society organizations and States, together with the findings of UN treaty bodies and Special Procedures and the IAJ’s own findings, and states the IAJ’s own assessment: that the United States is in a condition of systemic non-compliance with its human rights obligations. It sets out the IAJ’s method, grades its findings by domain, identifies what could not be established, and makes recommendations to the United States and to the Human Rights Council and its Member States.

The report is published on the IAJ’s International page. The IAJ has distributed the report to non-governmental organizations, to the Permanent Missions of 192 UN Member States, and to the President of the Human Rights Council and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The Long-Term Goal: Advancing Human Rights and Justice

The IAJ stands for progress in human rights, and for holding the baseline of human rights already achieved against erosion. It regards the advancement of human rights as inextricably linked with the advancement of justice, and it contributes to both through education, research, and investigation.

The UN treaty bodies, the Human Rights Council and its Special Procedures, the Inter-American and other regional systems, and the treaty provisions they apply are, in the IAJ’s view, a starting point, not a destination. They mark an early stage in humanity’s recognition of human rights, and much of what they promise has yet to be delivered. The IAJ intends to take the recognition, protection, and delivery of human rights much further: by documenting where existing protections fail, by developing analysis where existing frameworks fall short, and by bringing that work to the people, institutions, and states able to act on it.

No single mechanism is sufficient. The IAJ’s documentation and analysis are designed to feed all of them simultaneously, creating the kind of sustained, multi-channel international attention that has historically produced reform in even the most resistant state systems.