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.
Want to see this approach in practice? Open the Africa GBV Observatory → · Read the Editorial Standards →
