• Human rights based approaches indicators

Human rights based approaches indicators

One of the most persistent obstacles facing human rights measurement is the widespread reluctance to use quantitative data to assess civil and political rights. There is a common belief in the human rights community that while economic and social rights are well suited to quantitative evaluation, civil and political rights are not.

The authors of this paper argue that the strict divide between civil/political and social/economic rights is largely artificial and highly problematic. Civil/political rights, just like social/economic rights, can and should be assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively

The authors show that the conceptual challenges to human rights measurement should not prevent one from using more systematic, consistent, and sometimes quantitative measures, when doing so is likely to further the goals of realizing human rights.

Including appropriate quantitative measurement alongside qualitative analysis has at least two major benefits.

• First, numbers can reveal information that is difficult to assess qualitatively. This is particularly true when it comes to gauging the magnitude and scope of a problem, comparing across regions or countries, or monitoring trends over time.
• Second, quantitative measurement can make a human rights argument more convincing and harder to refute.

The authors also argue that the existing array of human rights indicators is inadequate from a rights perspective, and will not improve without the engagement of academics, and particularly practitioners, in the human rights movement.

The authors, however, conclude that the qualitative observation and analysis will always play a central role in human rights work, and the methodological recommendations made in this paper will not always be feasible when decisions must be made quickly using available resources. However, the human rights movement has a long-term, collective interest in access to more comprehensive, rights-based, continuous, and systematic measurement tools.

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