Background Note This is an updated version of the 1991 United Nations (UN) Manual on the Effective Prevention of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions, which, through widespread usage, became known as the Minnesota Protocol (the Protocol). The Minnesota Protocol was originally drafted to supplement the UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions.I The UN Principles, which set out international legal standards for the prevention of unlawful death and the investigation of potentially unlawful death, were welcomed by the UN Economic and Social Council in 1989 after an intergovernmental process,II and endorsed by the UN General Assembly in the same year.III The preparation of the Protocol in its first iteration was facilitated from 1983 to 1991 by the Minnesota Lawyers International Human Rights Committee (now The Advocates for Human Rights), with contributions from the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It was adopted by the Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch of the UN Centre for Social Development and Humanitarian Affairs in 1991. It has since been used by national, regional and international courts, and commissions and committees such as the UN Human Rights Committee, the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The UN Principles and the Minnesota Protocol have also been used by States, international organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) around the world, becoming an influential touchstone for death investigations. Since the publication of the 1991 Protocol there have been significant developments in international law, investigative practice and forensic science. In several resolutions, the UN Commission on Human Rights mandated the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to update the Protocol.IV To ensure that the Protocol retains its relevance and reflects these advances, in 2014 the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, in collaboration with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, initiated a process to revise and update the Protocol. To this end they appointed an international team of legal and forensic experts and a high-level advisory panel.V Stuart Casey-Maslen served as the overall research coordinator. Responsibility for the content of the 2016 Protocol rests with those involved in bringing it up to date. The 2016 Minnesota Protocol is to be made available for download in all six UN languages on the website of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (www.ohchr.org). I. The 1989 Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions were endorsed by UN General Assembly Resolution 44/162 of 15 December 1989 and remain unchanged. II. ECOSOC Resolution 1989/65 of 24 May 1989. III. UN General Assembly Resolution 44/162 of 15 December 1989. IV. UN Commission on Human Rights Resolutions 1998/36, 2000/32, 2003/33 and 2005/26. The history of this process and references to additional UN and other documents of relevance to investigations are available at: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Executions/Pages/RevisionoftheUNManualPreventionExtraLegalArbitrary.aspx. V. vi The Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Death (2016)