Quantitative Human Rights Indicators Some Conclusions from a Survey

1. Quantitative Human Rights Indicators Some Conclusions from a Survey Rajeev Malhotra & Nicolas Fasel

2. Human Rights Indicators • What are human rights indicators? • What were the objectives of the survey? • Major findings and conclusions • A possible approach to identify and design human rights indicators? • Some Illustrations

3. Human Rights Indicators Quantitative Information • that can be related to human rights norms and standards; • that addresses and reflects the human rights concerns and principles; and • that are used to assess and monitor promotion and protection of human rights.

4. Objectives of the Survey • Review and assess major initiatives on quantitative human rights indicators; • Kind of information and human rights indicators that have been used under various initiatives; • Contribution of these approaches to a framework for monitoring the compliance of States parties with international human rights instruments.

5. Categories of Initiatives on Human Rights Indicators • Events-based data on human rights violation; • Socio-economic & other administrative statistics; • Household perception and opinion surveys; and • Data based on expert judgements.

6. Events-based data on human rights violation Information related to events characterised by occurrence of human rights violation: • Describes acts, identifies victims & perpetrators • Mainly focused on Civil and Political rights • HURIDOCS, CSOs, NHRIs (Chile) Truth Comms. + HR dimensions of indicators is concrete - Bias towards under-estimates, comparability problems, limitations in use for ESCRs

7. Socio-economic & other administrative statistics Information mainly related to standard of living and other facets of living, collected through administrative records and statistical surveys: • Focused on ESCRs but covers large aspects of Civil and Political rights; • Census, household surveys, civil registration system and administrative data; • NSA, CSO (Social Watch) IGOs; + Objective standardised methodology for data collection- high level of reliability and validity + Data source for HR monitoring not fully explored - HR dimensions of indicators- not always obvious

8. Household perception and opinion surveys Information based on sample of individuals on their personal views: • Information is predominantly qualitative and subjective; • Covers ESCRs and Civil and Political rights; • CSO (Gallup, Afrobarometer); + ‘Voice of the people’ dimension in assessments; - Emphasis on subjective undermines reliability and validity of indicators; - Representativeness and comparability limitations.

9. Data based on expert judgements Information based on qualitative assessments of limited number of ‘informed experts’: • Use of diverse sources of information; • Frequently used for cross-national comparisons; • CSO (Freedom House); + ‘Quick and effective for getting first assessments; - Emphasis on subjective undermines reliability and validity of indicators; - Representativenes and comparability limitations.

10. Findings and Conclusions from Survey • No ready to use framework for identifying and designing HR indicators for use in monitoring the compliance of States Parties; • Institutionalised approach based on objective methods of data collection, mainly in the public domain, is necessary to assist the State Parties in their reporting obligations for monitoring of HR treaties; • Need for balance between universal & contextually relevant HR indicators

11. Conceptual Considerations in human rights indicators • Need to reflect the normative framework and content of human rights in indicators; • Need to have a common approach to indicators for the ESCR and Civil and Political rights; • To the extent feasible, need to reflect human rights principles in the selection of indicators; • To have indicators for ‘substantive’ as well as ‘procedural’ human rights; • Need to monitor the conduct of the ‘process’ for the realisation of both CPR and ESCR; • Importance of ‘accessibility indicators’ in the monitoring of realisation of human rights.

12. Methodological Considerations in Human Rights Indicators • Obligation of State to respect, protect (violation and denial of rights) and fulfil (provision and facilitation); • Suitable for temporal and spatial comparison; • Quantitative indicators & qualitative assessments based on objective data generating methods; • Amenable to disaggregation in terms of regions, gender and specific population segments.

13. Towards a Conceptual Framework Respect Structural Indicators Protect Process Indicators Fulfil Outcome Indicators

14. Towards a Conceptual Framework Structural Indicators Reflect the ratification / adoption of legal instruments and existence of basic institutional mechanisms deemed necessary for facilitating realisation of the concerned human right. Process Indicators Relate the State policy instruments with milestones (which cumulate into outcomes that can be more directly related to realisation of right), hence capture accountability as well as the notion of progressive realisation Outcome Indicators Capture attainments, individual and collective, that reflect the status of realisation of the human rights in a given context