Examining these practices, I identify three distinctive modes of acting virtuously in the Universal Periodic Review: liberal, subaltern and parrhesiastic. This chapter focuses on the UPR Working Group, the public half-day review of each state, which I approach as a ‘public audit ritual’ of state responsibilisation for human rights, in which each state taking part (through its representatives) performs its commitment to human rights as well as its sovereign identity and its relations to other states. Although not presenting itself in these terms, it can be seen as an effort to develop ethical leadership, in as much as it seeks to cultivate virtuous sovereign subjects who acknowledge not only their own human rights ‘challenges’ but who are also willing to ‘constructively criticise’ other states and help them to improve. Positing that all states ‘have something to learn’ with respect to human rights, it replaces ‘naming and shaming’ with an encouragement of cooperative learning on how to address human rights issues through ‘sharing best practice’ and ‘promoting dialogue’. It constitutes a new model of international human rights monitoring: rather than a selective scrutiny of states with problematic human rights situations, the mechanism involves a periodic, holistic peer review of all UN member states.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) was launched in 2008 as part of the UN human rights system reform.

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