Women’s Human Rights Resources Database

Partner Organization: Bora Laskin Law Library, University of Toronto Faculty of Law

Student Leaders: Sheena Lessard, Katerina Svozilkova

Continuing work commenced in 2012, this working group will expand the scope of the existing catalogue of resources on international women’s rights issues currently housed at the Bora Laskin Law Library website (here), Created in 1995, the Women’s Human rights Resources (WHRR) database has become a crucial tool for human rights defenders across the globe who use it to access cutting-edge academic research that was previously confined to law libraries which are often inaccessible to women in the Global South. Professor Rebecca Cook, a women’s rights pioneer and founder of the WHRR database, was behind the push to update the WHRR. “This is such an important way for students to advance the field of women’s rights,” says Cook.

The WHRR database provides annotations for key UN documents and leading scholarly articles on a range of topics from economic globalization to reproductive rights to armed conflict. The WHRR database receives more than 15,000 hits per month, with diverse users from over 100 countries. This year’s group will continue to update the existing content while adding new content from leading human rights NGOs.

Read an article about the 2011-2012 working group's launch of the revamped Women's Human Rights Resources database here.