Basic Search
Categorized Search

Body
Session
Country

Using the Country drop down selection list (recommended)
Custom search

Subject

Using the Subject drop down selection list (recommended)
Custom search

Mandate

Using the Mandate drop down selection list (recommended)
Custom search

Symbol Number
Search Results
Accessing the Search Result Documents
Trouble-shooting Search Results

Slow Performance
Document links do not work?

If you have a personal firewall
If you do not have a personal firewall

You have trouble saving a .pdf document?

The Human Rights Documents web search facility is your gateway to all United Nations Human Rights official documents.

The United Nations has six official languages:

Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish

Providing the document you are looking for exists in one or more of the United Nations official languages it will be available to you via the Human Rights Documents web search facility.

This User Guide will ease you through the steps necessary to locate a specific document, or to browse all documents on particular search criteria.

The Human Right Documents search facility bas two search options:

1 Basic Search

2 Categorized Search

When you first connect to the site it opens with the Basic Search window open.

The use of each search facility is described in the following sections.

Basic Search

Use the Basic Search option when you know exactly what you want.

The search function operates in the same way as any of the major search
engines found on the web.

1 Type your search criteria in the text box

2 Click on Find

• The results of your search will be listed in the same way as any of the major search engines found on the web
  

Categorized Search

Use the Categorized Search when you are not looking for a particular
document but a series of documents for a particular category.

More is less!

Categories available are Body, Session, Country, Subject, Mandate, Symbol Number.

Each of these categories is discussed in detail below.

You can use one of the categories under Categorized Search or a combination of two or more. The more precise you are the fewer "hits" you will get and the more applicable the results will be.

For example:

Body

1 Click on the down arrow alongside Select Body

2 Click on the Body name to select it

• Select a Session (see below)
  
• If you do not select a Session you are likely to get more results than are useful

If your search criteria are too broad, you will always see the following message:

Note: The search resulted in more than 500 documents. Please refine your search.

3 Repeat steps 1 and 2 to add other bodies, if required

4 Make a selection from another category if applicable (see Country, Subject and Mandate below)

5 Click on the Search button

• The results of your search will be displayed in table format (see Search Results)

Session

1 Click on the down arrow alongside Select a Session

2 Click on a Session to select it

3 Repeat steps 1 and 2 to add other sessions, if required

4 Make a selection from another category if applicable (see Country, Subject and Mandate below)

5 Click on the Search button

• The results of your search will be displayed in table format (see Search Results)

Country

Using the Country drop down selection list (recommended)

1 Click on the down arrow alongside Country

• The Countries List window will open
  
• By default it will open at Countries - A

2 Click on the letter of the country name required

3 Click on the blue link of the country name

• The country name will be placed in the text box on the search screen

4 Repeat steps 2 and 3 to add other country names, if required

5 Make a selection from another category if applicable

6 Click on the Search button

• The results of your search will be displayed in table format (see Search Results)

Custom search

1 Type the words that you wish to search for in the text box for Country

2 Click inside either of the buttons Any or All Words under the Refine Search heading (see margin) depending on the result you require:

Any will search the Human Rights Documents database and will find documents containing any of the words you have entered

All Words will search the Human Rights Documents database and will fend only those documents containing all the words you have entered

3 Click on the Search button

The results of your search will be displayed in table format (see Search Results)

Subject

Using the Subject drop down selection list (recommended)

1 Click on the down arrow alongside Subject

• The Subject List window will open
  
• By default it will open at Subjects - A

2 Click on the letter of the subject required

3 Click on the blue link of the subject name

• The subject name will be placed in the text box on the search screen

4 Repeat steps 2 and 3 to add other subject names, if required

5 Make a selection from another category if applicable

6 Click on the Search button

• The results of your search will be displayed in table format (see Search Results)

Custom search

1 Type the words that you wish to search for in the text box for Subject

2 Click inside either of the buttons Any or All Words under the Refine

3 Search heading (see margin) depending on the result you require:

Any will search the Human Rights Documents database and will find documents containing any of the words you have entered

All Words will search the Human Rights Documents database and will find only those documents containing all the words you have entered

4 Click on the Search button The results of your search will be displayed in table format (see Search Results)

Mandate

Using the Mandate drop down selection list (recommended)

1 Click on the down arrow alongside Mandate

• The Mandates List window will open
  
• By default it will open at Mandates - A

2 Click on the letter of the mandate required

3 Click on the blue link of the mandate name

• The mandate name will be placed in the text box on the search screen

4 Repeat steps 2 and 3 to add other mandates, if required

5 Make a selection from another category if applicable

6 Click on the Search button

• The results of your search will be displayed in table format (see Search Results)

Custom search

1 Type the words that you wish to search for in the text box for Mandate

2 Click inside either of the buttons Any or All Words under the Refine Search heading (see margin) depending on the result you require:

Any will search the Human Rights Documents database and will find documents containing any of the words you have entered

All Words will search the Human Rights Documents database and will find only those documents containing all the words you have entered

3 Click on the Search button

• The results of your search will be displayed in table format (see Search Results)

Symbol Number

To print the About United Nations document symbols information:

Right click anywhere inside the About United Nations document symbols window

Choose Print from the pop­up menu

1 Type the document symbol number (or part of the document symbol number) in the text box, if known

or

2 For an explanation of United Nations document symbols, click on the down arrow alongside Symbol Number

• the About United Nations document symbols window will open:

3 Click on the Search button

The search results list gives details of the Body, the Session, the Date, the UN official document Symbol and the document Title. The last column Documents will contain links to the document in all languages in which the document exists (see Search Results)

Search Results

Accessing the Search Result Documents

1 Click on the blue link of the relevant letter of the language under the Documents heading to see the document in that language:

E = English

F = French

S = Spanish

A = Arabic

C = Chinese

R = Russian
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Links are only visible if a document is available in the applicable language
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• A new browser window will open to display the document content each time you click on a document link

Trouble-shooting Search Results Slow Performance

Slow Performance

Is your computer responding slowly?

1 Look in the Task Bar to check that you do not have multiple document windows open

2 Click on each in turn to close the window

Document links do not work?

If you have a personal firewall

If the document links do not work, it may be due to the presence of a personal firewall on your computer that restricts third-party cookies. Depending on the brand of firewall, it is most likely that you can correct this problem as follows:

1 Click on Privacy

2 Click on Cookie Control option

3 Click on 3rd Party Cookies

4 Click on Disable to accept third-party cookies

5 Remove Private Header information

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The terminology and steps above may vary according to the brand of firewall you have installed. The procedures do not usually vary greatly between products. If you have trouble locating the options listed above, please use the help facility within your firewall product or contact your software vendor.
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If you do not have a personal firewall

If you do not have a personal firewall and the document links do not work, you can correct the problem as follows:

1 Click on Tools in the Internet Explorer menu bar

2 Click on Internet Options in the Tools menu

3 Click on the Privacy tab

4 Click on the selector button and scroll down to set the Privacy level to Medium:

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The above instructions assume you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer, if you are using another browser the steps and terminology may vary slightly. Please use the help facility of your browser program using privacy as your search criterion. You should see a link to a topic to change your privacy settings.
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You have trouble saving a.pdf document?

The majority of the Human Rights documents available through the Search facility will be in Acrobat .pdf format. If you wish to save a document that opens in Acrobat Reader (see below) you will normally not be able to save it using the File menu.

• The Save and Save As options will normally be faded, meaning they are inaccessible

You may save a .pdf document as follows:

1 From within the Acrobat Reader window, click on the small diskette icon:

2 The Save As window will be displayed

3 Save the document as you would normally