Human rights

Rights monitoring and indicators

If international rights commitments are to have genuine impacts for individuals, action must be taken to ensure that duty bearers fulfil their responsibilities to protect and promote these rights. Rights monitoring of programmes and projects is also essential for assessing the effectiveness of rights-based approaches or ensuring that other development interventions are compatible with the protection and promotion of rights. This page provides resources on monitoring the performance of states on human rights, and assessing projects and programmes.

Page contents

Where is a good place to start?

The fifth chapter of the 2000 Human Development Report provides guidance on the use of human rights indicators for holding states to account. It is designed as a resource for civil society groups, individuals, governments and international bodies.

UNDP, 2000, Using Indicators for Human Rights Accountability', Chapter 5 of the UN Human Development Report 2000, UNDP
Under Article 55 of the UN Charter, all UN members commit to promote “universal respect for, and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction”. But to what extent do they put this into practice? When a country is making progress in development, who is to say whether or not its rate of progress is adequate? In this chapter of the UNDP’s Human Development Report for 2000, statistical indicators are presented as a powerful tool in the struggle for human rights.
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The websites of the following NGOs provide information on the human rights records of individual country governments.

Amnesty International - Working To Protect Human Rights Worldwide
Amnesty International (AI) is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights.

Human Rights Watch

Monitoring state performance

Despite state commitments in international human rights treaties, violations of human rights are prevalent across the world. This section provides links to information on the various approaches to monitoring the progress of governments in meeting their obligations.

A treaty monitoring body or committee has been created for each of the international human rights treaties. Links to these treaty monitoring bodies can be found on the section on the Human Rights Legal Framework in this topic guide. These treaty monitoring committees work by assessing periodic reports submitted by governments that have ratified the treaty. In addition to the formal state reports, some treaty monitoring bodies allow NGOs to submit shadow reports, providing an alternative perspective. Links to online guidance for producing shadow reports aimed at civil society groups are provided in the additional information resources section on this page.

Human rights indicators

Human rights indicators can be used to assess both state progress and programmes / projects. Indicators for assessing progress in realising rights are still in early stages of development, and limited progress has been made towards developing commonly accepted systems. There are challenges over the design, weighting, collection and use of data to measure rights. For example, there is a methodological challenge in adequately reflecting the situation for vulnerable groups, while producing aggregate data. Another challenge concerns the design of indicators that are appropriate for a range of cultures and contexts.

Alternative indicators may provide evidence where human rights-specific measures are unavailable. Examples include indicators on governance, corruption, electoral fraud, and human development. This section highlights the work currently available on human rights indicators.

The following two papers review the work produced so far on human rights indicators.

Filmer-Wilson, E., 2005, 'Summary Report of Material Collated Regarding Practical Guidance to Implementing Rights Based Approaches, Human Rights Analyses for Poverty Reduction and Human Rights Benchmarks from Development Actors and Other Relevant Communities', DFID, London
To what extent are human rights being incorporated into development programmes? How can a human rights-based approach best be developed? This report, by the UK Government Department for International Development (DFID), brings together material collated from development organisations in four key areas: practical guidance on rights-based approaches, including case studies and checklists; analytical tools which feature human rights for understanding the causes and characteristics of poverty; human rights impact assessment; and human rights indicators to measure development progress.
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Rajeev Malhotra, M. and Fasel, N., 2005, 'Quantitative Human Rights Indicators: A survey of major initiatives', Background paper for the UN Expert Meeting on Human Rights Indicators, Turku
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This report analyses methodologies used in the measurement of human rights, as well as democracy and governance.

Landman, T. and Häusermann, J., 2003, 'Map Making and Analysis of the Main International Initiatives on Developing Indicators on Democracy and Good Governance', Report for the Statistical Office of the Commission of the European Communities (EUROSTAT).
Democracy, human rights and good governance can be measured in many different ways, and this is reflected in the wide variety of initiatives that have developed such indicators. This project for the Statistical Office of the European Commission collates and evaluates existing initiatives. It also makes recommendations for the development of more efficient measurement tools.
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The following is a methodology for producing rights indicators for human rights assessments or programme evaluations, produced by the Danish Centre for Human Rights.

Sano, H-O. and Lindholt, L., 2000, 'Human Rights Indicators. Country Data and Methodology', Danish Institute for Human Rights, Copenhagen 
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The University of Minnesota's Human Rights Resource Centre has produced a manual on economic, social and cultural rights, which includes a section on Monitoring.

Human Rights Resource Centre, 2000, 'Circle of Rights - Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Activism: A Training Resource', University of Minnesota, Human Rights Resource Centre
What are economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights? What needs to be done to assert them? This manual, by the University of Minnesota, aims to encourage an expansion of activism for the promotion and protection of ESC rights. It presents not only information on laws and standards related to these rights, but addresses the strategy and tactics that organisations and individuals need to consider to promote economic, social and cultural rights.
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Indicators are also being developed on specific areas. The following two papers look at housing rights and the right to adequate food.

UN-HABITAT, 2003, 'Monitoring Housing Rights: Developing a Set of Indicators to Monitor the Full and Progressive Realisation of the Human Right to Adequate Housing', United Nations Housing Rights Programme, UN-HABITAT, Nairobi
How can housing rights for all be realised? This report, by United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT), suggests ways to develop a set of indicators to monitor and evaluate the full and progressive realisation of the human right to adequate housing. It concludes that, despite the complex challenges, the creation of a set of housing rights indicators will prove a valuable tool in the world-wide struggle for housing rights.
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This document provides guidelines for working on the right to food. Guideline 17 suggests a framework for developing indicators on the performance of states in this area.

FAO, 2004, Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realisation of the Right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security', FAO, Rome
What steps are necessary to realise the goal of adequate food for all? The Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) of the Council of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations has drawn up the following voluntary guidelines to support Member Nations’ efforts to achieve the realisation of the right to adequate food in the context of national food security. They define the right to food security and offer recommendations on creating an enabling environment, accountability and the rule of law.
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Monitoring RBA interventions

This section provides links to material on human rights-based reviews of programmes, and on impact assessment of rights programmes. As with other areas of human rights monitoring, approaches are at early stages.

The following handbook by Norad is one of the most developed tools on human rights impact assessments currently available.

NORAD, 2001, 'Handbook in Human Rights Assessment. State Obligations, Awareness and Empowerment', Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, Oslo
How do you enhance the human rights profile of development programmes? How do you identify the need for human rights impact analysis? This handbook by Norad assists the user in addressing human rights concerns by recording the potential, planned or likely positive or negative effects of the programme under review. It is not a manual on how to conduct a full-scale human rights impact analysis but a guide to identifying the need for such analysis.
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Starling, S. et al. 2004, 'Global Impact Monitoring: Save the Children UK's Experience of Impact Monitoring', Save the Children UK, London
What is impact assessment? Why is it important to assess impact and how should this be done? This paper, by Save the Children UK (SC UK), documents the organisation’s development of a framework for impact assessment in order to improve accountability, learn from its work and maximise impact. It describes lessons learned from the implementation of its Global Impact Monitoring (GIM) framework and draws conclusions about improving impact assessment processes.
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This document aims to contribute to a systematic approach to human rights impact assessment.

HOM, 2004, 'Reinvigorating Human Rights in the Barcelona Process: Using Human Rights Impact Assessment to Enhance Mainstreaming of Human Rights', The Humanist Committee on Human Rights, Ulbrecht
How can human rights be mainstreamed in the European-Mediterranean Partnership? This paper from the European University Institute introduces the Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) and argues for a more systemic approach to human rights analysis. Using Morocco as a case study, it suggests that HRIA combined with country analysis offers a conceptual framework for human rights analysis as well as for the integration of human rights throughout the policy process.
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This UNDP guidance offers guidelines on human rights-based programme reviews.

UNHCHR, 2004, 'Human Rights-Based Reviews of UNDP Programmes. Working Guidelines'. Draft document, UNDP, Geneva
The UN operates a Common Understanding of the human rights-based approach to development (HRBA). This United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) paper sets out working guidelines for a human rights-based review of UNDP country offices and projects based on the Common Understanding. The guidelines aim to support reviews at each phase of programming, strengthen existing activities and assist in the design of new programmes from a human rights perspective.
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Schneider, A. and Zuniga-Hamlin, R., 2005, 'Governance Hybrids: Pro-Poor, Rights-based Approaches in Rural Peru', Institute of Development Studies, Brighton.
How do we understand the hybrid forms of governance that occasionally emerge when rights-based approaches (RBAs) are introduced into contexts of extreme poverty? This paper from the Institute of Development Studies looks at the impact of RBAs on poverty in rural Peru. It argues that to be a useful theoretical framework, RBAs should incorporate intermediate categories, mixing rights with seemingly opposed principles such as those of clientelism.
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Additional information resources

NGO country human rights reports

• Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity
• Human Rights Watch

NGO shadow reporting

The following online resources are aimed at civil society groups, and provide guidance on how to produce a shadow report for a UN treaty monitoring body.

• UNIFEM Stop Violence Against Women - STOPVAW: This website hosts a note on producing shadow reports.
• Centre for Reproductive Rights: This page provides guidance for advocacy groups, and links to shadow reports on reproductive rights from a range of countries.
• Human Rights Internet (HRI): This website offers resources for advocacy on economic, social and cultural rights within the international human rights system. It also provides a comprehensive list of human rights organisations.  This site is aimed particularly at Canadian NGOs, but is relevant internationally.

Treaty monitoring

• Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR): The OHCHR has an overview page introducing the treaty monitoring bodies for the human rights treaties.

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