Sources & Reading Room
A working shelf for checking claims and building context.
These are recurring sources used for questions about rights, governance, gender-based violence, humanitarian crises and development. Where possible, the original document or dataset comes first.
Human rights & legal records
- UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) — treaty bodies, special procedures, Council material and legal instruments.
- Universal Human Rights Index — searchable recommendations and country observations.
- African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights — regional human-rights law, communications and mechanisms.
- African Union human-rights treaties — regional treaties and protocols.
- African Governance Architecture — governance standards and AU shared values.
Gender-based violence & women’s rights
- UN Women Data Hub — gender data, SDG indicators and violence-against-women resources.
- WHO: Violence against women — prevalence estimates, definitions and health evidence.
- UNFPA: Gender-based violence — survivor-centred response, prevention and programme guidance.
Note: survey or prevalence estimates answer different questions from the Africa GBV Observatory’s individually indexed public-source cases.
Humanitarian & development data
- ReliefWeb — humanitarian reports, assessments and situation updates.
- Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) — humanitarian datasets and crisis data.
- World Bank Open Data — development indicators and country-level measures.
- UNdata — United Nations statistical tables and profiles.
Independent reporting
- Reuters — international developments, institutions, diplomacy and economics.
- Associated Press — breaking developments, courts, elections, conflict and public institutions.
Use the source that fits the question.
A treaty can establish a legal standard but not necessarily what happened in a particular incident. A news report can be a good starting point, but the underlying judgment, dataset or official record may be stronger. And when credible sources disagree, the disagreement should remain visible.
