General human rights reports can serve a number of purposes, including forming the basis of future shadow reports. It is important that advocates evaluate the goals they wish to achieve through documentation of violations of women's human rights before undertaking the process. The following are short discussions of some of the ways human rights reports can be used to promote women's rights: 

• Human rights reports show that there are systematic violations of women's rights taking place. Bringing publicity to single failures of the criminal justice system is generally ineffective, as government authorities can fairly easily dismiss them as the result of individual misconduct, incompetence etc. Human reports, however, are a powerful tool in showing a breakdown of the entire system that is meant to protect human rights. Such breakdowns affect all women who try to access the system and must then be addressed as systemic problems.
• Perhaps the greatest value of a human rights report is as a tool to exert pressure on States to protect women's human rights. The reports can serve to publicize the issue at the local, national and international level and may serve to promote the work of human rights advocates in the particular country. Because human rights reports analyze failures of the government structure to prevent widespread abuses of women's rights, they can "embarrass" the government structures into remedying the situation. As mentioned above, general human rights reports can also serve as an evidentiary basis for alternative or "shadow" reports submitted to international bodies, such as the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. Shadow reports are discussed, below, in more detail.
• Human rights reports contain recommendations, aimed primarily at the government of the country being investigated. Some reports also contain recommendations to other strategic national governments, such as the U.S., intergovernmental bodies, such as the UN or Council of Europe, or even donor organizations. The recommendations should represent a list of problem areas that the researchers identify in each country. The aim of the recommendations is to advocate for concrete actions that will improve women's rights in specific ways. More general recommendations can also be useful, however. In-country NGOs may use general recommendations drafted by an outside NGO in order to formulate specific recommendations for government action. The recommendations can also help to organize the future work or projects of the NGOs.
• Human rights reports can be used as a type of needs-assessment in planning an advocacy strategy to address a particular abuse of women's rights. Documentation can reveal patterns of abuses, which must then be addressed by advocates in order to affect real change.