LibGuides: Human Rights Research Guide: Recommended Resources

Where to Look?

Knowing where to look for articles, primary sources, and available data for your research can be tough. The following resources listed in the columns below can help you to narrow your search to databases and websites that are go-to resources in researching published scholarly content, primary resources, and datasets focused on human rights.

For a complete listing of databases available from UConn Library ear-marked for human rights research, check out Databases A-Z: Human Rights.

Additionally, UConn's Human Rights Institute has a helpful collection of resources available to students and researchers, such as archival material, an internship database, and a database on teaching human rights.

Not sure how to search a database? See the following video for tips!

Article Databases

The following databases are great places to go to get scholarly articles for your research!

Academic Search Premier
Includes articles from scholarly journals and popular magazines covering a wide variety of disciplines with the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
Alternative Press Index
Includes article abstracts covering cultural, economic, political & social change.
Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO)
Includes scholarly articles, papers from university research institutes and non-governmental organizations, foundation-funded research projects, and conference proceedings on international affairs.
Public Affairs Index
Indexes journal articles, books, statistical yearbooks, conference proceedings, research reports and government documents world-wide on public affairs, political science, public administration, and international relations.
Women's Studies International
Includes abstracts for articles, newsletters, books, proceedings, and dissertations covering current topics in feminist research.

Primary Sources

If you are looking for primary sources to use in your research, consider using the following resources!

American Civil Liberties Union Papers
Access to newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, court files, memorandums, telegrams, minutes, and legal case records from the archive of the ACLU papers from 1912-1990.
Archives of Sexuality & Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940
Includes articles, manuscripts, images, and correspondence on social, political, health, and legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities globally; sex and sexuality; and related issues.
Human Rights Studies Online
Includes articles, audiovisual content, and other primary source materials covering major human rights violations and genocides worldwide from 1900 to 2010.
Independent Voices
Alternative press publications produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals and the New Left, Native peoples, antiwar activists, Black Power advocates, Latino/as, LGBT activists, right-wing extremists, and more.
Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa
Documents and images related to Southern African countries, including periodicals, newspapers, records of colonial government commissions, correspondence, UN documents, out-of-print books, oral testimonies, life histories, and speeches.

• UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN Human Rights) is the leading UN entity on human rights. On this site you can find human rights reports by country, issues, human rights instruments, and publications and resources.

Research Data

If you are looking for data to use in your research, consider using the following resources!

ICPSR
Access to a vast archive of social science data for research and instruction covering political science, demographics, history, economics, and international relations.

ILOSTAT
The leading source of labour statistics from the International Labour Organization.

iPoll
Includes polls and data survey results from academic, commercial and media survey organizations such as Gallup Organization and Harris Interactive.

HRMI (Human Rights Measurement Initiative) Rights Tracker
Explore human rights scores across countries, rights, and people. Everything on the Rights Tracker is freely available for use by human rights advocates, researchers, governments, and others, under a Creative Commons licence. You are welcome to download and use the full dataset with acknowledgement.
Index of Social and Economic Rights Fulfillment (the SERF Index)
Under the International Covenant for Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, ICESCR, countries are obligated to devote the maximum of their available resources to progressively realize the substantive rights enumerated in the Covenant. Thus, measuring the extent to which a country fulfills its economic and social rights obligations under the ICESCR requires considering the level of rights enjoyment in the country relative to the level of the country’s obligation. The SERF Index uses socio-economic statistics like school enrollment and child mortality rates to gauge the extent to which rights-holding individuals enjoy economic and social rights.
Journal of Human Rights (JHR) Dataverse
Harvard Dataverse repository of datasets associated with articles in the Journal of Human Rights. This includes the original data that accompany published articles and can be used by scholars to replicate/advance on the research therein. It is constantly updated as any new author whose article is accepted with replication data is required to house the data on this open source portal.

World Bank Open Data
Access to global development data covering agriculture, manufacturing, health indicators, education, natural resources, and foreign investment in the economies of over 200 developing nations.

Human Rights Research Guide — Recommended Resources

Where to Look?

Article Databases

Primary Sources

Research Data