State Innovation Exchange and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Co-host UPR at Home - Southeast
By: Connie Wu, Senior Administrative Associate, Reproductive Freedom & Health Equity
In 2025, the U.S. federal government withdrew from the United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review process — the first time in the 17 year history of the UPRO that a country has done so, and an unprecedented break from a system grounded in universal participation.
Under international human rights law, all levels of government in the United States have international obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill human rights within their jurisdictions.
On May 18, State Innovation Exchange (SiX) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) co-hosted the first UPR at Home - Southeast convening in Atlanta, Georgia. This was a groundbreaking event that brought state legislators, directly impacted people, civil rights, and social justice organizations together to witness and document the harms of intersecting human rights crises in the region in reproductive rights, maternal health, criminalization of pregnancy, voting rights, democracy, immigration rights, and the treatment of people within the criminal legal system.
The convening highlighted the leadership of state legislators from three states (Georgia, Florida, Tennessee) in the SiX network, and their commitment to governing collaboratively and take bold action. SiX is committed to supporting state legislators’ engagement with human rights frameworks and building opportunities for state legislators to engage as subnational actors in international human rights processes. See SiX’s UN engagement timeline.
The UPR at Home - Southeast underscored a core belief driving this work: human rights accountability cannot begin and end with the federal government. As federal participation in the UPR process has diminished, state legislators throughout the SiX network continue to step forward and demonstrate that states remain at the forefront of championing human rights.