Current approaches to hr measurements green 2001

What We Talk about When We Talk about Indicators: Current Approaches to Human RightsMeasurementAuthor(s): Maria GreenReviewed work(s):Source: Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Nov., 2001), pp. 1062-1097Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4489371 .

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HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

What We Talk About When We Talk About Indicators: Current Approaches to Human Rights Measurement

Maria Green*

I. Introduction 1063 II. Types of Materials Surveyed 1065 III. Initial Definitions 1065

A. Indicators 1065 B. Human Rights 1066

IV. An Overview of Basic Human Rights Concepts 1066 A. Origin and Nature of International Human Rights

Protections 1067 B. List of the Rights Protected under International Law 1068 C. Progressive Realization 1070 D. Rights that are not Subject to Progressive Realization 1071 E. Three Duties: Respect, Protect, Fulfill 1071 F. Core Content 1072 G. Organizing Principles 1073

* Maria Green, M.A., J.D. is the director of the International Anti-Poverty Law Center (IAPLC), an international human rights organization based in New York. Her research interests focus on international economic, social, and cultural rights.

The author would like to thank Brigit Toebes at the IAPLC, for both substantive contributions and crucial background research to this project, and Alyson King for Spanish translations. Many other people generously provided assistance with this article, including discussions of indicators theory and text copies or suggestions concerning indicators literature. Special thanks to Abdullah An'Na-im, Saskia Bal, Ineke Boerefijn, Audrey Chapman, Fons Coomans, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Adam Green, Ellen Hagerman, Steve Hanson, Fried van Hoof, Paul Hunt, Isabell Kempf, Resurreccione Lao-Manalo, Stephen Marks, Naomi Onaga, Goro Onojima, Andreas Pfeil, Elsa Stamatopoulou, Alexandre Tikhonov, Hillary Wiesner, Sarah Zaidi, and the staff and Ph.D. candidates at SIM.

Human Rights Quarterly 23 (2001) 1062-1097 @ 2001 by The Johns Hopkins University Press



2001 Current Approaches to Human Rights Measurement 1063

H. Normative Contents of the Various Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 1074

I. Obligations of Conduct and Obligations of Result 1075 J. Two Common Misconceptions with Regard to

Human Rights 1075 V. Definitions: "Indicators," "Benchmarks" and "Indices"

in the Human Rights Discourse 1076 A. General (non-HR) Definitions for Indicators 1076 B. Human Rights Indicators as Statistics 1077 C. "Thematic" Approach to Human Rights Indicators 1078 D. Benchmarks 1080 E. Indices 1082

VI. Theoretical Issues Concerning Human Rights Indicators 1084 A. Criteria by which They are Adopted: Disaggregation,

Progressive Measurement 1084 B. What is Being Measured: Compliance with

Obligations or Enjoyment of Rights? 1085 C. Distinctions Between Human Rights Indicators

and Development Indicators? 1089 D. Distinctions Between Civil and Political Rights

Indicators and Indicators for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights? 1091

VII. The Role of Human Rights in the Development Discourse 1094 VI. Conclusion and Recap of Discussion Points 1096

I. INTRODUCTION

In the spring of 1999, when the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) was preparing the Human Development Report 2000 (HDR), it asked the International Anti-Poverty Law Center (IAPLC) to prepare a background paper on the state of the field in human rights indicators. The Human Development Report Office was particularly interested in receiving the following elements:

- rough overview and introduction of the issue, i.e. (human rights) indicators;

- summary, and thorough review of recent contributions, approaches, and trends in the field, covering: [(i)] approaches used in measurement, such as whether the measurement focuses on human outcomes or state obligations; (ii) areas covered; (iii) whether the focus is on ESCR [economic, social and cultural rights] or extends to



1064 HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY Vol. 23

specific provisions in the multitude of other legal instruments such as the Rights of the Child, CEDAW, core labor standards;

- identifying gaps in the literature.1

This article is the result of that request. Its purpose is to provide an account of the current state of the field with regard to human rights indicators, including indicators for civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights.2

The literature survey covers materials dealing both with the theory of human rights indicators and with the practice of human rights monitoring. The survey is limited to materials dealing explicitly with human rights indicators and excludes texts from the infinitely more vast field of development, economic, and social indicators, where those texts do not contain references to international human rights law. In particular, this article does not attempt to cover the field of social indicators theory, in which the UNDP was already expert. Because of the constraints of time and length, the documents surveyed deal primarily with UN human rights instruments rather than with regional human rights instruments such as the various conventions of the Organization of American States and the Organization for African Unity.

In the course of an extensive examination of the field we identified five central questions in the discussion of human rights indicators:

1. Is the word "indicator" used within the human rights community to refer to information beyond statistical data?

2. Is there a difference in kind between indicators designed to measure economic, social and cultural rights and indicators designed to measure civil and political rights?

3. Is there a practical distinction to be made between indicators designed to measure states' compliance with their obligations under the various human rights treaties and indicators designed to measure individuals' and groups' enjoyment of their human rights under the various human rights treaties? If so, to what extent have effective indicators been developed to measure compliance and enjoyment respectively?

1. "Terms of Reference, Literature Survey for 2000 Human Development Report, Human Rights and Human Development," Agreement between the United Nations Develop- ment Programme and the International Anti-Poverty Law Center (IAPLC) (April/May 1999).

2. The original version of this article served as a background paper for the Human Development Report 2000. Except for minor editorial changes, the text is as it appeared then. Occasional updates, reflecting more recent developments in the field, appear in the footnotes except where otherwise noted.




4. Is there a distinction to be made between indicators concerning economic, social and cultural rights and indicators that measure levels of development or conditions of poverty?

5. What are the kinds of indicators currently being used by UN bodies, NGOs, and scholars with regard to the human rights guaranteed under the various international treaties?

Some of these questions have relatively straightforward answers; others are still highly unsettled. The article is designed to provide an overview of the state of the field with regard to each, while also providing enough technical background information on human rights to facilitate further discussion.

II. TYPES OF MATERIAL SURVEYED

The term "indicator" is not yet a fixed term within the field of human rights law and advocacy, and discussions of indicators theory do not always appear under that term. In addition, much of human rights theory relevant to indicators must be extrapolated from documents that discuss or define how enjoyment of particular rights is to be measured or how obligations under a particular right are to be defined. Literature from four general categories that discuss indicators is addressed here. Those categories are 1) documents put forward by United Nations bodies, including those charged with overseeing the implementation of human rights treaties, special rapporteurs, and those dealing with human rights issues in the context of development; 2) reports by NGOs; 3) reports by governmental bodies; and 4) scholarly books and articles dealing with issues of human rights norms, indicators, monitoring, and reporting.

III. INITIAL DEFINITIONS

A. Indicators

The range of definitions for "indicator" currently in use in the human rights literature is discussed below at section V. For the purposes of this article, we have adopted the following working definition: "A Human Rights Indicator is a piece of information used in measuring the extent to which a legal right is being fulfilled or enjoyed in a given situation."




B. Human Rights

There are two ways in which human rights serve to inform debates about development, poverty, governance, and other related concerns. The first is based on simple international legitimacy: human rights provide a legitimate normative basis for declaring a certain set of conditions immoral. The second is a more precise set of analytic tools for breaking down the actions of powerful institutions into permissible and impermissible categories.

Although many organizations and individuals think of human rights in terms of the first function, we have chosen to focus on the second and more precise use. The assumption is that a "human rights indicator" must be pegged to specific rights and obligations defined under national or international law. In order to discuss the field of human rights indicators, therefore, it is necessary to describe, at least briefly, the basics of the international human rights field: what rights are involved; what governments are required to do in fulfilling those rights; and what the primary international machinery is that serves to protect and oversee the fulfillment of those rights. The following brief sketch is intended to lay out the basic concepts governing all human rights, including some specific details regarding the less well-known economic, social and cultural rights.3

IV. AN OVERVIEW OF HUMAN RIGHTS

If human rights indicators refer to tools for measuring human rights, then any discussion must be predicated on the basics of what, in fact, is to be measured.4 The following section provides a highly truncated introduction to the relevant standards.

3. A lack of conceptual clarity with regard to the specific contents of the major economic, social and cultural rights has frequently been blamed for a failure to identify suitable indicators for these rights. See, e.g. Report of the Seminar on Appropriate Indicators to Measure Achievements in the Progressive Realization of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 25-29 Jan. 1993, U.N. Doc. No. A/CONF.157/PC/73, 20 Apr. 1993, at 37 (hereinafter "1993 Indicators Seminar").(Note: the Thesaurus of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has been published since the original version of this article was completed. See STEPHEN A. HANSEN, THESAURUS OF ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS: TERMINOLOGY AND POTENTIAL VIOLATIONS (2000) also available at <http//shr.aaas.org/ ethesaurus.html> (2000). Similarly, so have several General Comments by the Commit- tee-see note 23 infra. Another recent addition is INT'L HUMAN RIGHTS INTERNSHIP PROGRAM & ASIAN FORUM FOR HUMAN RIGHTS & DEVELOPMENT, CIRCLE OF RIGHTS, ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL

RIGHTS ACTIVISM: A TRAINING RESOURCE (2000).) 4. This view is widely endorsed, by the 1993 Indicators Seminar, (see supra note 3), and

works of NGOs such as PhilRights (Philippines), Provea (Venezuela). See, e.g., Ana Barrios, Provea, Indicatores de Medicion, aspectos metodologicos y estrategias de exigibilidad del derecho a la salud, Conference Paper from the workshop Indicadores




A. Origin and Nature of International Human Rights Protections

International human rights law is created primarily by international treaties, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)5 or the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR);6 and declarations, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.7 Other major human rights treaties include the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC),8 the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW),9 the Convention Against Torture (ICAT),10 and the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD)."

The international treaties are drafted and acceded to by governments and are geared primarily towards the actions of governments: At their base they consist of governments assuming certain legal duties with regard to individuals or groups. Thus, human rights treaties serve primarily to create rights for people and duties for governments. Human rights law can be applied, in certain situations, to the actions of other actors, but it was designed primarily to place both positive and negative constraints on the actions of states. It is important to note in this context that, even where the primary duty is upon the state, that duty is often a duty to regulate a third

para la Exigibilidad y Vigilancial Social de los Derechos Econ6micos, Sociales y Culturales, convened by the Plataforma Colombiana para Derechos Humanos, Democracia, y Desarrollo, Santa fe de Bogota, Colombia, 24-25 May 1999. (On file with author.)

5. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted 16 Dec. 1966, G.A. Res. 2200 (XXI), U.N. GAOR, 21st Sess., Supp. No. 16, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966), 999 U.N.T.S. 171 (entered into force 23 Mar. 1976).

6. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted 16 Dec. 1966, G.A. Res. 2200 (XXI), U.N. GAOR, 21st Sess., Supp. No. 16, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966), 993 U.N.T.S. 3 (entered into force 3 Jan. 1976) (hereinafter Covenant).

7. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted 10 Dec. 1948, G.A. Res. 217A (111), U.N. GAOR, 3d Sess. (Resolutions, pt. 1), at 71, U.N. Doc. A/810 (1948), reprinted in 43 AM. J. INT'L L. 127 (Supp. 1949).

8. Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted 20 Nov. 1989, G.A. Res. 44/25, U.N. GAOR, 44th Sess., Supp. No. 49, U.N. Doc. A/44/49 (1989) (entered into force 2 Sept. 1990), reprinted in 28 I.L.M. 1448 (1989).

9. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, adopted 18 Dec. 1979, G.A. Res. 34/180, U.N. GAOR, 34th Sess., Supp. No. 46, U.N. Doc. A/ 34/46 (1980) (entered into force 3 Sept. 1981), 1249 U.N.T.S. 13, reprinted in 19 I.L.M. 33 (1980).

10. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, adopted 10 Dec. 1984, G.A. Res. 39/46, U.N. GAOR, 39th Sess., Supp. No. 51, U.N. Doc. A/39/51 (1985) (entered into force 26 June 1987), reprinted in 23 I.L.M. 1027 (1984), substantive changes noted in 24 I.L.M. 535 (1985).

11. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, adopted 21 Dec. 1965, 660 U.N.T.S. 195 (entered into force 4 Jan. 1969), reprinted in 5 I.L.M. 352 (1966).




party actor. For instance, if a private employer is holding workers in slavery- like conditions, with no intervention by the government, the lack of intervention is a violation of human rights by the government that has taken on the duty of protecting the right to decent working conditions.12

It should also be noted that human rights law has emerged in part as a result of a political process, and therefore does not cover everything that might be considered good. For instance, no specific international human right to protection from ordinary street crime currently exists,13 except in the sense that any measures taken by the state to combat crime must be taken in a nondiscriminatory way.

Each of the UN human rights treaties has a committee, or oversight body, charged with monitoring the member governments' compliance with the treaties. The UN committees review reports and issue recommendations to governments. In addition, they often provide guidance as to the meaning of the law, which they do through the issues they ask governments to report upon; the issues they choose to take up with governments in oral discussion; the concluding remarks they make after each government has been reviewed; and the issuance of General Comments that explain and elabo- rate on the meaning of specific provisions within their treaties or deal with other similar issues.

B. List of the Rights Protected under International Law

The individual human rights enumerated in international treaties often encompass a number of subsidiary rights, and many aspects of each right overlap. For instance, the right to health encompasses a right of access to safe drinking water, as does the right to food. Access to safe drinking water in the home and school are also aspects of the right to housing and the right to education, respectively.'4

How a right is characterized may be the result of theory developed by international bodies and scholars after the source treaty was ratified. For instance, the ICESCR speaks of a "right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and

12. See THE MAASTRICHT GUIDELINES ON VIOLATIONS OF ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS, SIM Special No. 20, Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht, (Theo C. van Boven, Cees Flinterman, & Ingrid Westendorp eds., 1998).

13. See Brigit Toebes, The Human Right to Safety, unpublished paper. (On file with author.) 14. See Maria Green, CESR Guide to Economic and Social Rights, unpublished draft

document prepared for the Center for Economic and Social Rights [hereinafter CESR Guide]. (On file with author.) See, e.g., General Comment 4, The Right to Adequate Housing, U.N. Doc. E/1992/23, S 8; General Comment 13, The Right to Education, U.N. Doc. E/CN.12/1999/10, S1 6 (1999).




housing.""• In practice, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as well as most scholars and activists, generally speak of two separate rights, the right to food and the right to housing. No parallel right to adequate clothing has been meaningfully discussed by the international human rights bodies.

John Gibson, in his useful Dictionary of International Human Rights Law, identifies sixty-four human rights derived from international legal treaties and four human rights derived from UN Declarations. Although

TABLE 1

I Civil and Political Rights II Legal Rights Assembly Appeal Association Arrest Asylum Bail Child Compensation Dignity, Honor, Reputation Contract Inability Discrimination Courts/Tribunals Life Death Penalty Name Detention Nationality Double Jeopardy Political and Public Service Due Process Press Equal Protection of the Law Property Ex Post Facto Law Religion Habeas Corpus Speech Innocence Presumption Territory, Movement in Judgement and Sentencing Women Juvenile Due Process

Legal Assistance Person Before the Law Privacy Punishment Security of Person Self-Incrimination Torture Trial Trial Procedure

III Economic, Social and Cultural Rights IV Collective Rights Author Aliens Culture Apartheid Education Genocide Family Migrant Workers Food Minorities Health Refugees Science Peoples, Self-Determination Social Security Peoples, Natural Resources Work, Right to Slavery Work, Conditions Stateless Work, Trade Unions Work, Trade Union Rights

15. Covenant, supra note 6, at art. 11.




Gibson's labels are a little idiosyncratic and inconsistent in format, the list provides a useful starting point for a discussion of the overall field of international human rights. Gibson's list is as follows:16 For the most part, the human rights that are considered civil or political in nature are well understood and need not be explained here. A few key concepts with regard to the economic, social and cultural rights are however provided below.

C. Progressive Realization

The economic and social rights in both the ICESCR and the CRC are subject to the limitation of "progressive realization." The implications of this phrase are explained by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights:

The principal obligation of result reflected in article 2 (1) is to take steps "with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized" in the Covenant. The term "progressive realization" is often used to describe the intent of this phrase. The concept of progressive realization constitutes a recognition of the fact that full realization of all economic, social and cultural rights will generally not be able to be achieved in a short period of time. In this sense the obligation differs significantly from that contained in article 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which embodies an immediate obligation to respect and ensure all of the relevant rights. Neverthe- less, the fact that realization over time, or in other words progressively, is foreseen under the Covenant should not be misinterpreted as depriving the obligation of all meaningful content. It is on the one hand a necessary flexibility device, reflecting the realities of the real world and the difficulties involved for any country in ensuring full realization of economic, social and cultural rights. On the other hand, the phrase must be read in the light of the overall objective, indeed the raison d'etre, of the Covenant which is to establish clear obligations for States parties in respect of the full realization of the rights in question. It thus imposes an obligation to move as expeditiously and effectively as possible towards that goal. Moreover, any deliberately retrogressive measures in that regard would require the most careful consideration and would need to be fully justified by reference to the totality of the rights provided for in the Covenant and in the context of the full use of the maximum available resources.17

Note that this definition creates a rebuttable presumption that any deliberately retrogressive measures with regard to economic, social and

16. JOHN S. GIBSON, DICTIONARY OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW 37-38 (1996). 17. Covenant, supra note 6, at art. 2 T 1; see U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and

Cultural Rights, Annex III, General Comment No. 3 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, The Nature of State Party Obligations, U.N. Doc. E/1991/23 (E./C.1 2/1 990/3).




cultural rights would be a violation of human rights duties under the Covenant.

D. Rights That Are Not Subject to Progressive Realization

The major substantive economic, social and cultural rights are generally considered to be the rights to food, health, housing, education, and work. It should be noted that in addition to these substantive rights there are what might be thought of as procedural rights that apply to all human rights without exception. These rights are not subject to the "progressive realization" clauses that apply to the substantive rights, and always create an immediate duty on the state. Three major rights that fall into this category are the right to non-discrimination, the right to legal remedies if one's rights are violated, and the right to participation in the making of policies or laws that affect one's rights.

It is particularly well-established that the principle of non-discrimination applies to all human rights and is always immediately applicable. Thus, if a government's housing policies discriminate against women, the government is in violation of the human right to housing regardless of the level of resources available to that government. Under the ICESCR, individuals are protected from discrimination "on the basis of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status."18

E. The Three Kinds of Duties: Respect, Protect, Fulfill

The analytic breakdown of governmental duties into these three types is usually referred to in the context of economic, social and cultural rights, but in fact it applies to all human rights, including civil and political rights.19 A draft manual prepared for an NGO explains the duties as follows:

The duty to respect, that is, not actively to deprive people of the guaranteed right. For instance, a government respects a person's right not be tortured by refraining from torturing him or her, and it respects a person's right to food by refraining from interfering with his or her means of access (for example by not imposing food blockades to punish her region for holding dissident political views).

The duty to protect, that is, not allow others to deprive people of the guaranteed right. For instance, a government has a duty to pass and enforce laws forbidding companies from spewing out health-impairing pollution.

18. Covenant, supra note 6, at art. 2. 19. See MAASTRICHT GUIDELINES, supra note 12.




The duty to fulfill, that is, to work actively to establish political, economic, and social systems and infrastructure that provide access to the guaranteed right to all members of the population. For instance, a government has a duty to see that a school system providing free and compulsory primary education is in place throughout its country. It also has a duty to oversee any private company that provides basic infrastructure support and to ensure that its services are adequate and open to all without discrimination.20

F. Core Content

Despite the "progressive realization" rule, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has established a notion of "minimum core content" with regard to each economic, social and cultural right. In the words of the Committee:

[T]he Committee is of the view that a minimum core obligation to ensure the satisfaction of, at the very least, minimum essential levels of each of the rights is incumbent upon every State party. Thus, for example, a State party in which any significant number of individuals is deprived of essential foodstuffs, of essential primary health care, of basic shelter and housing, or of the most basic forms of education is, prima facie, failing to discharge its obligations under the Covenant. If the Covenant were to be read in such a way as not to establish such a minimum core obligation, it would be largely deprived of its raison

d'etre. By the same token, it must be noted that any assessment as to whether a State has discharged its minimum core obligation must also take account of resource constraints applying within the country concerned. Article 2 (1) obligates each State party to take the necessary steps "to the maximum of its available resources." In order for a State party to be able to attribute its failure to meet at least its minimum core obligations to a lack of available resources it must demonstrate that every effort has been made to use all resources that are at its disposition in an effort to satisfy, as a matter of priority, those minimum obligations.21

20. CESR Guide, supra note 14. Note the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has increasingly adopted a two-tiered approach to the "fulfill" obligation, dividing it into fulfill (facilitate) and fulfill (provide). See General Comment 12, Right to Adequate Food, U.N. Doc. No. E.C.12/1999/5, 1 15 (note). Note also this remark in General Comment 13, supra note 14, T 47 which came out after the original version of this article was completed: "As a general rule, States [P]arties are obliged to fulfil (provide) a specific right in the Covenant when an individual or group is unable, for reasons beyond their control, to realize the right themselves by the means at their disposal."

21. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment 3, supra note 17. In the fall of 1999, after this paper was completed, an electronic conference on the concept of "core content" took place under the aegis of the IAPLC. The report of that conference is forthcoming.




Note that this definition again creates a rebuttable presumption that the existence of widespread poverty can be attributed to violations of economic, social and cultural rights by the government in question. As we will see below, however, it is important to note that this is an assumption made for practical purposes and does not have the legal impact of reducing the definition of observance of economic, social and cultural rights to a mere generalized survey of whether or not poverty exists in large amounts in the country in question. An individual case of violation with regard to economic, social and cultural rights-for instance, depriving a prisoner of access to food-is as much a violation of human rights as an individual act of torture.

G. Organizing Principles

The major economic, social and cultural rights are the right to food, the right to health, the right to education, the right to housing, and the right to work. It is possible to think of the contents of each of these rights in terms of a consistent set of "organizing principles." For instance, the Special Rapporteur on Primary Education, Katarina Tomasivski, has adopted an analytic framework for the right to education using the principles of Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability, and Adaptability.22 The IAPLC has similarly suggested that the contours of each substantive economic, social, and cultural right can be seen as shaped by the following three principles:

Availability (elements of the right relating to the existence within a country of adequate goods or services required to fulfill the right).

Accessibility (elements of the right relating to access to the necessary good for all members of society, including such issues as geographic accessibility, affordability, and absence of discrimination).

Quality (elements of the right relating to the actual nature of the good or services required to fulfill the right, including such issues as health and safety regulation of food or housing, depth of academic instruction, and cultural appropriateness).23

22. Katarina Tomasivski, Preliminary Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, 1S 51-74. U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/1999/49.

23. International Anti-Poverty Law Center, Statement to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Day of General Discussion, 10 May 1999. (On file with author.) The IAPLC's use of the terminology drew on an earlier body of work from several sources. See, e.g., BRIGIT TOEBES, THE RIGHT TO HEALTH AS A HUMAN RIGHT IN

INTERNATIONAL LAW 364-65 (1999). Note also that since the original version of this paper was completed, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has adopted versions of all or some of the availability/accessibility/acceptability/




H. Normative Contents of the Various Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

There is not enough room in this article to describe the actual contents of each of the major economic, social and cultural rights. However, a brief breakdown describing some key elements to each of the rights may assist in the discussion. All of these elements entail a three-fold duty on the part of the government: the duty to respect, protect, and fulfill, as described above.

Food: 1) the right to sustainable access to adequate food; 2) the right to safe food, including the right to information about food and nutrition; and 3) international aspects of the right to food.

Health: 1) rights involving freedom and control over one's health, including for instance reproductive freedom and freedom from torture; 2) the right to health care; 3) the right to underlying determinants of health, including for instance clean water, sanitation, healthy and natural workplace environments, and information about health.

Housing: 1) the right to access to adequate housing; 2) the right to security of tenure and freedom from forced evictions; and 3) the right to privacy in the home.

Education: 1) rights involving the aims and objectives of education; 2) the right to receive an education (including free and compulsory primary education, and progressively realized free secondary and tertiary education, as well as technical or vocational and fundamental education); 3) rights involving material conditions of teachers; 4) the right to make choices about one's own education or that of one's children; and 5) the right to establish schools and to teach.

Work: 1) the right to freedom from forced labor; 2) labor union rights; 3) the right to adequate working conditions and adequate leisure; 4) the right to fair

wages and equal remuneration.24

Note that even this rough breakdown is not comprehensive, particularly with regard to the right to work.

adaptability/quality vocabulary in several new General Comments. See General Comment 12, The Right to Adequate Food, U.N. Doc. E/C.12/1999/5 (1999); General Comment 13, supra note 14; General Comment 14, The Right to Health, U.N. Doc. E/ CN.12/2000/4 (2000). A useful compilation of General Comments can be found in U.N. Doc. HRI/GEN/1/Rev.5 (26 Apr. 2001).

24. These characterizations are based on Maria Green, CESR Guide, draft document, supra note 14. The summaries of the rights to food, education, and health have been updated since the original version of the paper to reflect the recent General Comments of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.




I. Obligations of Conduct and Obligations of Result

The rights in the ICESCR entail for states parties both obligations of conduct and obligations of result.25 The distinction in this context has been clearly described by Asbjorn Eide:

An obligation of conduct (active or passive) points to behavior which the duty holder should follow or abstain from. An obligation of result is less concerned with the choice of the line of action taken, but more concerned with the results which the duty-holder should achieve or avoid.26

We mention the distinction here simply to clarify that both indicators of process (such as the number of mothers attended by medical personal at birth) and indicators of outcome (such as the number of infants surviving their first three months) can be linked, without conceptual difficulty, to the various obligations under human rights law.

J. Two Common Misconceptions with Regard to Human Rights

The first misconception is that the existence of poverty is identical to proof that economic, social and cultural rights are being violated, or that the absence of poverty is proof that economic, social and cultural rights are being respected. As we have seen above, it is theoretically possible that a country is taking all the proper measures mandated by the human rights treaties, and is appropriately devoting its available resources to the establishment of systems to ensure adequate food, health, housing, education, and work condition, but that even so the resources are insufficient to actually relieve poverty. In such a case no human rights violation would be taking place, or at least not by the national government. Alternatively, and more importantly, it should be noted that economic and social rights are not merely, or precisely, poverty rights. For instance, a resource-rich country that failed to take adequate steps to protect its food supply by not ensuring proper facility inspections, might be violating the right to food even if no one was suffering from hunger within the country's territory. Similarly, a

country in which all schools gave adequate instruction, but were segregated by race, would be in violation of economic, social and cultural rights law, even though no one was living in poverty there.

The second misconception is that all economic, social and cultural

25. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment 3, supra note 17; see also MAASTRICHT GUIDELINES, supra note 12.

26. Asbjorn Eide, Realization of Social and Economic Rights and the Minimum Threshold Approach, 10 HUM. RTS. L. J. 35-51, at 38 (1989).




rights imply expenditure on the part of governments and that all civil and political rights do not imply state expenditure. It should be noted that many economic, social and cultural rights are essentially negative in nature, requiring only that a government refrain from violating the right, and that many civil and political rights are positive in nature, requiring for instance the provision by a government of a functioning judicial system. The distinction has come up particularly in the context of indices, with some suggesting that it is possible to compare violations of civil and political rights across all countries but that violations of economic, social and cultural rights must be measured only in relation to the economic well- being of each individual country. Despite the concept of "progressive realization," this suggestion strikes us as inconsistent with the many negative duties implicit in the ICESCR.27

V. DEFINITIONS: "INDICATORS," "BENCHMARKS" AND "INDICES" IN THE HUMAN RIGHTS DISCOURSE

A. General Non-Human Rights Definitions for "Indicators"

There is certain vagueness, even in the more general field of social indicators, about the actual meaning of the term. Two definitions, one by an NGO and one by the UN, may help to provide a reference point.

Redefining Progress, an NGO, provides the following definition:

Technically speaking, an indicator refers to a set of statistics that can serve as a proxy or metaphor for phenomena that are not directly measurable. However, the term is often used less precisely to mean any data pertaining to social conditions.28

The UN Population Fund provides another:

The definition and qualities of an indicator have long been the subject of debate. An indicator is a variable, or measurement, which may convey both a direct and indirect message. So long as it can be consistently measured, it can be based on either quantitative or qualitative information.

27. But see Mary Robinson, Introduction by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in BENCHMARKS FOR THE REALIZATION OF ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS, A ROUND-TABLE DISCUSSION ORGANIZED BY THE HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, Geneva, 25 Mar. 1998 (unpaginated) [hereinafter ROUNDTABLE ON BENCHMARKS]. "While a prohibition on torture or inhuman treatment translated into practical standards will yield a similar result from one country to another, this is not the case in relation to economic, social and cultural rights." Id. (On file with author.)

28. Clifford W. Cobb & Craig Rixford, Lessons Learned from the History of Social Indicators, Redefining Progress, Nov. 1998, available at <http://www.rprogress.org/pubs/pdf/ SoclndHist.pdf> (visited 1 Aug. 2001), at 1.




An indicator is generally expressed as a single figure, even when it combines information from a number of different sources. Presentations of more complex arrays of inter-related figures are usually referred to as statistical tables or tabulations, which in many cases are needed to supplement the summary information contained in indicators.29

Within the human rights community there appear to be two distinct

usages for the term: one a numerical definition in which "indicators" is

simply another word for "statistics"; and one which we will call a more "thematic" approach in which the term "indicators" covers any information relevant to the observance or enjoyment of a specific right. These are each discussed in turn below.

B. Human Rights Indicators as Statistics

It is clear that for many experts and scholars working in human rights, "indicators" refers purely to statistical information. Danilo Tuirk, the UN

Special Rapporteur on the Realization of Economic, Social and Cultural

Rights, devoted a large part of his report to issues of indicators for economic, social and cultural rights. His discussion provided the following definition: "The word indicator refers to statistical data which attempts to provide or 'indicate' (usually based on some form of numerical quantification) the

prevailing circumstances at a given place at a given time."30 Similarly, the report of a recent NGO workshop that discussed indica-

tors for the right to education offers this definition: "The word indicators in this context refers to statistical categories that are perceived to express the

degree of fulfillment (progressive realization) of the right to education by the State Party.""31

The report of a 1998 UN workshop, Benchmarks for the Realization of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights contains the following remark: "For the most part, they [indicators] are essentially statistical in nature. That in turn means that their subject matter must be potentially quantifiable, not

only in a technical sense but in practical terms as well.""32 Similar definitions can be found in any number of other documents.

29. UNITED NATIONS POPULATION FUND, TECHNICAL AND POLICY DIVISION, INDICATORS FOR POPULATION AND

REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH PROGRAMMES 4 (Oct. 1998). 30. Danilo Tuirk, Realization of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, First Progress Report,

1990, 11 4. U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1990/19 [hereinafter Progress Report]. 31. Report of the Workshop on Indicators to Monitor the Progressive Realisation of the Right

to Education. World University Service-international, Geneva (Versiox), 9 May 1999 [hereinafter WUS Report].

32. Philip Alston, Concluding Observations, In ROUNDTABLE ON BENCHMARKS, supra note 27.




With regard to statistics, it should also be noted that there is a small but extremely useful body of literature that focuses on human rights and statistics specifically. This literature does not always employ the term "indicator," and often focuses on how to use or understand various kinds of statistical information in a human rights context. Samuelson and Spirer, for instance, in an article of this type, look to illustrate the use of methodologi- cal tools regarding the determination and reading of incomplete or sup- pressed data. One example they provide is an accurate inference of mass murder from a statistically unlikely surge in reported heart attacks.33

C. "Thematic" Approach to Defining Human Rights Indicators

There is no question but that information other than statistics is used in monitoring whether or not a government is complying with its human rights obligations. The UN committees charged with overseeing the various human rights treaties routinely request information of all sorts: from descriptions of legislation passed to "any factors or difficulties affecting the enjoyment of the right by persons within the jurisdiction of the state."34

It is also clear that there is a solid tradition in the human rights field of using the word "indicator" itself to refer to information beyond statistics.

The International Labor Organization (ILO), discussing the question of whether human rights indicators go beyond statistical information, states: "The ILO's supervisory bodies use a variety of indicators of the degree of implementation of the instruments they supervise. . . . Many of these indicators include a 'numerical' aspect, many do not."35

For instance, one of the indicators suggested by the ILO with regard to the right to just and favorable conditions of work (usually considered an economic or social right) is: "What procedures exist to ensure that men and women are actually paid equal remuneration for equal work? Do, for instance, equal opportunities commissions exist? By whom are they staffed, and to what extent are they independent?"36

33. See especially Douglas A. Samuelson & Herbert F. Spirer, Use of Incomplete and Distorted Data in Inference About Human Rights Violations, in HUMAN RIGHTS AND

STATISTICS: GETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT 71 (Thomas B. Jabine & Richard P. Claude eds., 1992).

34. Reporting Guidelines for the Committee on Civil and Political Rights, reproduced in Fausto Pocar, The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, in MANUAL ON HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTING 172 (1997).

35. Int'l Labour Organization (ILO), Some General Points Concerning Indicators Within the Field of Human Rights, background paper prepared for the 1993 Indicators Seminar, supra note 3. (On file with author.)

36. ILO, The Right to Just and Favourable Conditions of Work: Possible Indicators, background paper prepared for the 1993 Indicators Seminar, supra note 3, U.N. Doc. HR/GENEVA/1 993/SEM/BP.21.




The Common Country Assessment (CCA) indicators used by the UN in the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) process do not provide an explicit definition for "indicators," other than to mention that "[t]he participants identify sources of information including both quantitative and qualitative data.""7 However, the actual indicators used for civil and political rights, which focus on legal frameworks, clearly contemplate information beyond the simply numerical.

Similarly, the Human Development Report 1992 includes "[a]n illustrative checklist of indicators of political freedom," with the indicators also falling into this second, "thematic" category: "Is there prosecution of journalists for infringement of [freedom of opinion and expression] laws? Are the punishments prescribed severe in proportion to the offense?"38

A background paper on human rights indicators in the development process, prepared for the Canadian International Development Agency, declares that: "An indicator is an instrument to tell us how a project/ programme is proceeding. It is a yardstick to measure results, be they in the form of quantitative or qualitative change, success or failure. It allows managers, but also all the stakeholders involved in a programme, to monitor desired levels of performance in a stable and sustainable fashion.""9 The indicators suggested fall into both the statistical and the "thematic" categories: "increased in % of voters registered" and "greater [democrati- cally elected] legislative control over government decisions/budgets/ap- pointments, etc."40 Provea, a Venezuelan NGO, writes:

An indicator is not only a quantitative measurement; indicators must also be constructed that can measure other aspects that are relevant from a human rights perspective. This suggests that as well as measuring results, they should measure key questions in the matter of human rights, like the political will of a state or the fulfillment of the principle of non-discrimination, to cite only two.41

37. United Nations, Guidelines, Common Country Assessment (CCA) (Apr. 1999), at 9 [hereinafter Common Country Assessment]. Since this article was first drafted, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, at a workshop on indicators, has characterized the CCA approach as follows: "The OHCHR has chosen to adopt the CCA definition of indicator which identifies an indicator as a measurement or variable conveying information which may be quantitative or qualitative, but consistently measurable

... ." The workshop report also notes that "there is no one precise definition

of a human rights indicator." Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Research and Right to Development Branch, and the United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report Office Workshop on Civil and Political Rights Indicators, held in Geneva, 27-29 Sept. 1999, at 1.

38. UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 1992, at 31 (1992). 39. Ilan Kapoor, Indicators for Human Rights and Democratic Development: a Preliminary

Study, Canadian International Development Agency 3 (Jan. 1995). (On file with author.) 40. Id. at 16. 41. Barrios, supra note 4, translated from the original Spanish.




The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), in its invaluable Imple- mentation Handbook for the Rights of the Child, does not appear to define the term "indicators." However, the Handbook provides both "implementation checklists" for each of the rights in the treaty (asking questions that require answers beyond statistical information) and a useful list, culled together from committee documents, of all of the statistical data requested by the Committee on the Rights of the Child in its Reporting Guidelines to aid it in monitoring implementation of the convention.42

The CRC, it should be noted, contains both "civil and political" and "economic and social" rights, although neither the Convention nor the Committee specifies which rights are which.43

Nevertheless, the second, more expansive use of the term appears to produce indicators that lean to some extent towards the existence of legislation or other specific legal policies and may measure in part what Tomasevski calls the "willingness" (as opposed to "capacity")44 of governments with regard to human rights.

D. Benchmarks

Benchmarks and indicators are distinct terms in the human rights literature. In brief, benchmarks can be defined as goals or targets that are specific to the individual circumstances of each country. As opposed to human rights indicators, which measure human rights observation or enjoyment in absolute terms, human rights benchmarks measure performance relative to individually defined standards.45 Benchmarks, in this sense, are also sometimes referred to in the context of economic, social and cultural rights as "minimum thresholds."46

For a number of experts and activists writing on economic, social and cultural rights, indicators appear to play a role as a sort of way station on the road to benchmarks.47 For instance, UN Committee of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights member Paul Hunt has proposed a four step process with regard to indicators and benchmarks, based on the premise that some

42. RACHEL HODGKIN & PETER NEWELL, IMPLEMENTATION HANDBOOK FOR THE CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD 68-69 (UNICEF, 1998).

43. Id. at 51. 44. Katarina Tomasivski, Indicators, in ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS: A TEXTBOOK 390

(Asbjorn Eide, Catarina Krause & Allan Rosas eds., 1994). 45. See Robinson, Introduction, supra note 27. 46. Eide, supra note 26, at 35-51. 47. See, e.g., Danilo Turk, Progress Report, supra note 30, at 26 ("country-specific

thresholds measured by indicators"); Tomasivski, Indicators, supra note 44.




obligations under the ICESCR are subject to the "progressive realization" and "maximum of available resources" language of the Covenant, and are therefore variable among states.

For those variable obligations, he proposes the following process:

(i) agree to key right to education indicators;

(ii) using agreed indicators, states set their national benchmarks;

(iii) using agreed indicators, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (and others) set appropriate benchmarks for States. (The benchmarks in (ii) and (iii) might be the same).

(iv) the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (and others) monitor above benchmarks with the reporting (and other) processes, repeat steps (ii)-(iv).48

For other experts, existing indicators might be used directly as benchmarks with regard to the progressive realization of economic, social and cultural rights. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr has described in some detail the role development-based indicators might play as benchmarks for measuring progressive realization under the Covenant. She defines the following relevant criteria:

A framework for benchmarks needs to:

- Take account [of] resource availability; - Take into account the level of deprivation in the country; - Take account of the policy options available;

- Identify clearly those rights that are not subject to progressive realization or to resource availability;

- Use at least some universal indicators to reflect universal rights.49

Perhaps, there will be at some point a reason to distinguish between indicators to measure "invariable" obligations (obligations applying abso- lutely to all countries) and indicators to measure "variable" (or relative) obligations for the purpose of national benchmarks, but the question does not appear to be currently settled within the human rights field.

48. See Paul Hunt, Right to Education Indicators/Benchmarks, informal paper for the World University Service Workshop, supra note 31. (On file with author). See also Paul Hunt, State Obligations, Indicators, Benchmarks and the Right to Education, in ROUNDTABLE ON

BENCHMARKS, supra note 27. 49. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Human Development Indicators and Analytic tools as Benchmarks

in Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, in ROUNDTABLE ON BENCHMARKS, supra note 27.




E. Indices

Indices, or "rating scales based on expert knowledge and judgement,"50 are

occasionally used in the human rights context. They generally rely on composite information and their main purpose appears to be to provide a comparative means of ranking governments by performance. Among the more famous indices referred to in the human rights literature are the Freedom House Democracy Index, the Human Freedoms Index of the HDR, the Humana Index, and the Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI). 5

A few basic points are made about indices in the human rights literature: 1) There is concern that, because they involve choosing a limited number of specific indicators and giving them various weights, they reflect the concerns of the index compilers rather than a value-neutral interpreta- tion;52 2) Many of the indices are not based on the specific norms of human rights law (for instance, although the PQLI does not appear to be referenced to human rights norms at all, it is often cited as an ESCR index);53 and 3) When indices' methodology is not entirely transparent they risk accusations or the reality of bias. (For instance, the Freedom House index seems frequently to have been accused of a bias against reflecting human rights violations in non-communist countries.)54

A larger issue is the concern over whether comparative indices can actually reflect the relative situations in various countries. Robert Justin Goldstein, writing in a volume published in 1992, writes:

50. Richard P. Claude & Thomas B. Jabine, Exploring Human Rights Issues with Statistics, in HUMAN RIGHTS AND STATISTICS, supra note 33, at 28.

51. More detailed discussions of the civil and political rights indices can be found in HUMAN

DEVELOPMENT REPORT 1991 and 1992, (supra note 38); see also Meghnad Desai, Measuring Political Freedom, in LSE ON FREEDOM 195 (Eileen Barker ed., 1995). (On file with author.)

52. See Kenneth A. Bollen, Political Rights and Political Liberties in Nations: An evaluation of Human Rights Measures, 1950-1984, in HUMAN RIGHTS AND STATISTICS, supra note 33, at 193. This article contains an interesting section called "Are Political Democracy Indexes Appropriate Measures?"

53. For example, Kathleen Pritchard writes that "[t]he measure of socio-economic rights [in a study of comparative human rights] comes from Morris' (1979) Physical Quality of Life Index which is based on indicators of literacy, infant mortality, and life expectancy." Kathleen Pritchard, Comparative Human Rights: Promise and Practice, in HUMAN RIGHTS: THEORY AND MEASUREMENT 140 (David Louis Cingranelli ed, 1988); see also Robert Justin Goldstein, Limitations of Quantitative Data, in HUMAN RIGHTS AND STATISTICS supra note 33, at 44. But note that the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, in its 1991 Reporting Guidelines, requests states to provide their county's PQLI. See Revised General Guidelines Regarding the Form and Contents of Reports to be Submitted by States Parties Under Articles 16 and 17 of the International Covenant on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights, U.N. ESCOR 12th Comm., U.N. Doc. E/C.12/1991/1 (1991) [hereinafter CESCR Reporting Guidelines].

54. See Goldstein, supra note 53, at 47.




I doubt that it would be worth the cost to know, with a kind of false precision, that, for example, Chile has a "human rights score" of 144 and East Germany has one of 150. Human Rights specialists and statisticians would recognize such differences as being largely meaningless, but they might be viewed as significant by the press and the lay public ...

Given the notorious unavailability and unreliability of human rights data, especially for the more repressive regimes, small differences in human rights "scores" between countries or across time within one country are not ever likely to be very credible as an accurate indicator of real change; on the other hand, large differences will likely be obvious before detailed and reliable statistics are available. Thus, David Banks, a statistician with a special expertise in human rights data, has noted that while the limitations of existing statistics in the field do not "preclude crudely approximate sorts of analysis," most major changes in human rights policy are heralded by a "great variety" of clues "that signal something is afoot," and therefore "the most useful contribution statistical methods can make is to document formally what everyone knows."55

However, the use of indices in a human rights context has been endorsed by various UN programs, including the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF)56 and the experts who work on the Human Development Report, who stress the helpfulness of being able to compare progressive realization of economic, social and cultural rights among countries at similar levels of development and with access to similar resources.57

It is also given limited support even by those worried about the issues of oversimplification and bias. For example, Andrew McNitt in his article, Some Thoughts on the Systematic Measurement of the Abuse of Human Rights writes that: "Value conflicts need not destroy our ability to study human rights abuses so long as we resist the temptation to rely exclusively upon summated measures of those rights."5

Another informational structure, an "information pyramid," appears to combine elements from both indices and indicator lists. Isabell Kempf, suggesting this structure in the context of indicators for the right to education, includes a description of a pyramid as presenting three levels of information: 1) a few summary "key indicators of status"; 2) "a carefully chosen expanded set of statistics that would afford a more in-depth understanding of the forces at work behind the key indicator . . . this

55. Id. at 55. 56. Common Country Assessment, supra note 37, at 19. 57. See Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Human Rights and Human Development, paper presented at

the Columbia University Seminar on Human Rights, 1 Feb. 1999, at 6-7. (On file with author.)

58. See Andrew D. McNitt, Some Thoughts on Systematic Measurement of the Abuse of Human Rights, in HUMAN RIGHTS: THEORY AND MEASUREMENT, supra note 53, at 93.




information would describe interrelationships, for example, show how female enrolment is subject to opportunity costs, cultural variables, etc."; 3) a third level that "would add a further dimension by reporting on selected research studies, including case studies, programme evaluations, and small- scale quantitative studies."" Kempf remarks that:

[W]here the gathering of information is concerned, key indicators, which are easily available and disaggregated, will allow for a common and comparable language across countries, whereas the interrelationships allow the specific context of each country to be explained. For example, several countries can have large illiteracy rates, but for different underlying reasons.60

VI. THEORETICAL ISSUES CONCERNING HUMAN RIGHTS INDICATORS

A. Criteria

Criteria, in this context, refers to the characteristics, such as collectability, accuracy, comparability, and so forth, that are used in determining whether a particular indicator is appropriate for use in a particular context. The human rights discourse appears to use the same kind of criteria for indicators that development experts and social scientists use.61 For instance, Provea, speaking on criteria for indicators for the right to health, refers directly to those promulgated by the World Health Organization (WHO).62

However, there are two key characteristics that are widely cited as distinctively important to human rights measurements. These are: 1) the ability to measure over time so as to examine "progressive realization" (in the case of economic and social rights), improvement in standards (in the case of civil and political rights), and non-retrogression63; and 2) disaggregation.64

59. Isabell Kempf, How to Measure the Right to Education: indicators and their potential use by the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, background paper submitted to the day of General Discussion on the Right to Education, UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 30 Nov. 1999. U.N. Doc. E/C.12/1998/22 (citations omitted).

60. Id. 61. For a detailed discussion of criteria for indicators for economic, social and cultural

rights see Tirk, Progress Report, supra note 30, at 6. 62. Barrios, supra note 4, at 3. See similarly, WUS Report, supra note 31. 63. See, e.g., TOrk, Progress Report, supra note 30, at 10, 21; Thomas B. Jabine & Denis F.

Johnson, Socio-Economic Indicators and Human Rights, in AM. ASSN. ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE

23 (Oct. 1993); Scott Leckie, The Need for Entirely New Indicators in Assessing the Realization of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, background paper for the 1993 Indicators Seminar, supra note 3, UN Doc. HR/GENEVA/1 993/SEM/BP.13.

64. See, e.g., Tirk, Progress Report, supra note 30 at 10; Tomas(vski, Preliminary Report, supra note 22, ?? 29-30; WUS Report, supra note 31; reporting guidelines of the various UN human rights committees.




Disaggregation, in the context of human rights indicators, is usually keyed to groups that have special protections under international human rights law (such as children through the CRC or women through CEDAW); to groups that fall into the categories protected by rights law against discrimination (such as ethnic minorities); and to groups that are likely to be vulnerable or experience disadvantage for any other reason (such as rural populations in comparison to urban populations).6"

The question of disaggregation, however, raises another issue that is not yet fully developed: the fact that indicators primarily describe general conditions with regard to rights that are ultimately held by individuals. Although the human rights committees routinely look at information that describes large swathes of people (and the "minimum core content" definition of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, depends upon such information), the rights are ultimately held by individuals. The following comment by Herbert Spirer et al. sounds a note of caution:

Statistical indicators, even when provided with adequate disaggregations and time series, can only reflect, at best, average values as observed for some population of interest. Even when these averages are accompanied by some measures of dispersion, they can only suggest the locus (in geographic or demographic terms) of discrepancies which call for further investigation. Such discrepancies do not, in and of themselves, offer proof of human rights violations; they merely pinpoint where such violations may be found.66

A similar point is made by Turk: "For instance, because economic, social and cultural rights are rights of the individual, the general scope of many indicators may preclude their direct application, other than for obtaining a general overview of a particular situation."''7 This particular issue is in need of further development by the human rights field in general.

B. What is Being Measured: Compliance with Obligations or Enjoyment of Rights?

There are two directions from which to design any given human rights indicator: That of government compliance (as a means of measuring

65. See, e.g., CESCR Reporting Guidelines, supra note 53, at art. 11, (2), (i). 66. Samuelson & Spirer, supra note 33. 67. Turk, Progress Report, supra note 30, at 5. But see Fukuda-Parr, supra note 49. "Note

that [the Human Development Index] and other indices reflect outcomes rather than inputs or effort, such as expenditures or facilities and resources. . ... It is thus strongly focused on the capabilities of individuals and not on the condition of the country." ROUNDTABLE ON BENCHMARKS, supra note 27, unpaginated.




whether a government is fulfilling its obligations under a particular covenant) and that of individual enjoyment (as a means of measuring whether each person is fully enjoying the rights guaranteed to him or her by a covenant). Although compliance and enjoyment are two sides of a single coin, it is possible to approach indicators for human rights from either angle.

Paul Hunt has called a similar distinction between a "violations" approach and a "progressive realization" approach a "tyrannizing dichotomy,"68 pointing out the danger of placing too much emphasis on a theoretical distinction that reflects only one facet at a time of a larger picture. It is clear that ultimately all approaches slide together to a single point: where there is a right there is a duty, and where the duty is not met there is a violation. In many cases it is irrelevant, as a practical matter, which approach is used. In some other cases, however, it is possible that one approach or the other can lead to a clearer understanding of the overall picture. This section examines the extent to which one approach or the other has been adopted by experts in the field.

TOrk, wrote in 1991:

[A]ny use of core indicators or development thereof must be consistent with both the obligations inherent in a certain right, and the entitlements involved. The availability of valid indicators can assist with the derivation of the "minimum core requirements" attached to a right, but it cannot offer everything. In many ways, a focus upon the entitlements side of the discourse surrounding economic, social and cultural rights may be more feasible and advantageous in the context of indicator usage. 69

By contrast, the Australian Human Rights Council, Inc., writing about human rights in the development context, clearly contemplates indicators determined from the obligations side of the discourse. In its recent manual, The Rights Way to Development, the Council remarks that:

In drawing up benchmarks for the realization of human rights it is important to bear in mind that the obligations to "respect," "protect" and "fulfill" rights will necessitate the identification of separate indicators for each. The obligation to respect a certain right might entail the drafting of new legislation, the training of service providers or reform of the bureaucracy and this can be evaluated in terms of action taken immediately. The obligation to protect might require looking at mechanisms by which state and non-state actors are regulated in

68. Paul Hunt, Right to Education Indicators/Benchmarks, supra note 48. For a discussion of the theoretical issues involved in examining obligations and violations see Audrey Chapman, A "Violations" Approach for Monitoring the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 18 HUM. RTS. Q. 23-66 (1996); see also MAASTRICH

GUIDELINES, supra note 12. 69. TOrk, Progress Report, supra note 30, at 28.




relation to that right. By contrast, the obligation to fulfill will require looking at changes in budgetary allocations and at the reviewing of resource priorities. The outcome of these actions will also differ over time, requiring a longer timeframe for the evaluation process as explained below.70

The Philippine Human Rights Information Center (PhilRights), a national NGO that is doing extensive work on indicators for economic, social and cultural rights, describes its work in terms of both enjoyment of rights and observance of obligations, though perhaps with an emphasis on obligation:

[T]he project aims to come up with a set of indicators to measure the extent to which government claims of economic prosperity have actually translated into the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights by the people. It seeks to pave the way for the setting up of a system to assess government's responsibility and monitor its performance with regard to the realization of those rights.71

and later:

The end results should serve as a firm basis for a comprehensive answer to the question: Is the government succeeding or failing in its obligation to respect, protect and fulfill the economic, social and cultural rights of the citizens? 72

Similarly, the Provea article on health indicators says that "[t]he final objective of a measurement indicator in the area of human rights should be that of evaluating the State responsibility in objective terms.""7

The actual indicators used by NGOs, UN bodies, and governmental bodies do not usually state explicitly whether they are measuring enjoyment or compliance, respectively. Often there is no way or need to distinguish between the two, and often the UN body or the NGO switches easily between indicators that clearly look from one direction or the other. For instance, the Reporting Guidelines for the Committee on Economic and Social Rights ask states to report both on "the number of homeless individuals" (an enjoyment-side approach) and "measures taken to encourage 'enabling strategies' whereby local community-based organizations and the 'informal sector' can build housing and related services" (an obligations- side approach).74

70. Andre Francovits & Patrick Earle, The Rights Way to Development: Manual for a Human Rights Approach to Development Assistance, in THE HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA, INC. 68 (1998).

71. PHILIPPINE HUMAN RIGHTS INFORMATION CENTER (PHILRIGHTS), MONITORING ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND

CULTURAL RIGHTS: THE PHILIPPINE EXPERIENCE, PHASE ONE 2 (1997). 72. Id. at 5 (emphasis in original). 73. Barrios, supra note 4. 74. CESCR Reporting Guidelines, supra note 53 (Right to Adequate Housing).




In general, an indicator that focuses on the existence of legislation or the precise governmental measures taken to remedy a poverty issue can be considered to come more from a compliance side. An indicator that requests the number of children enrolled in primary school can be thought of as more focused on enjoyment. All of the human rights committees focus heavily on legislative issues, including the legal recognition of human rights and the existence of legal procedures to protect one's rights, and overall it can be said that within the UN human rights system itself there is at least an equal emphasis on measuring human rights from the compliance side as from the enjoyment side.

There may also be practical advantages, particularly with regard to economic, social and cultural rights, for focusing an approach to human rights indicators from the government obligation side. One reason for this has to do with "progressive realization," which is linked to "available resources."

Take for example the right to a healthy environment, which is a part of the right to health. This includes, inter alia, a right not to be discriminated against with regard to environmental-related health risks (such as not to have the government allow disproportionate environmental hazards in areas populated by ethnic minorities); a right to have the government respect one's environmental health (such as not to poison a river with effluvia from a government-owned factory); a right to have the government protect it (such as not to allow a privately-owned factory to poison a river); and a right to have the government fulfill it (such as by ensuring the clean- up of an accidental environmental hazard).

The right not to be discriminated against is always applicable. However, the other rights to respect, protection and fulfillment, will depend, in theory, on the resources available to the government in question. As a practical matter, therefore, it may be easier to determine the exact nature of each right by looking first to the exact nature of the governmental obligation under the "progressive realization" clause. If a person is not enjoying the full breadth of his or her rights, it may be because powerful actors are not living up their duties under the law; or it may be because the actors involved do not have access to the means to fulfill the rights. However, whether such an approach is either conceptually or practically useful is an issue that is still open for discussion within the human rights literature.




C. Distinctions Between Human Rights Indicators and

Development Indicators

To what extent does the human rights literature distinguish between "human rights indicators" and "development indicators" in the context of economic, social and cultural rights? There is a good deal to be gained from clarifying whether there is, in fact, a distinction between a human indicator and a

development indicator, and what the impact of such a distinction might be.

Ultimately, it would be preferable for the human rights and development paradigms to each provide something that the other lacks-a different

angle, or a different analysis, of the same problem, each of which leads in the direction of a solution that the other field might not contemplate. However, the field may not have fully reached this kind of clarity yet.

It is evident to many, if not most, of the people who speak of indicators and human rights, that there is no distinction in kind between a rights indicator and other indicators. An example is the following language in the introduction to a volume about human rights and statistical information:

If we think of Morris's work, Measuring the Conditions of the World's Poor, the

Physical Quality of Life Index, if we consider the operations of such United Nations units as the International Labour Organization and the World Health Organization, if we review the environmental reports of the Worldwatch Institute, and the health, food, housing, education, and labor force indicators compiled by the World Resources Institute, then it becomes clear that statistical and measurement efforts have concentrated on the cluster of Declaration articles pertaining to socio-economic rights. Relatively little, by contrast, has been done (at least until recently) to measure and monitor personal security, civil rights, and political freedoms.75

It should also be noted that extensive use of UNDP and World Bank numbers, for example, is made by committees overseeing economic, social and cultural rights, and by NGOs that monitor and report on national human rights compliance issues.76

Philip Alston, the former Chair of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, in the concluding observations of a UN Workshop on the subject of human rights benchmarks, distinguishes between indicators (which he has previously described as "essentially statistical in nature") and benchmarks. Alston appears to give a specific human rights nature, in this context, only to the second:

75. Claude & Jabine, supra note 50, at 12. 76. See, e.g., The Center for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights-Latin America Program,

From Needs to Rights; Recognizing the Right to Health in Ecuador, Jan. 1999, at 6, available on Center for Economic and Social Rights, <http://www.cesr.org/text%20files/ health.PDF>.




Benchmarks are thus different from indicators because they take specific human rights standards as their starting point. Thus, the setting of a benchmark, and the identification of the criteria by which it is to be measured, is not dependent upon, or limited by, the availability of a technically accepted indicator or detailed statistical data linked to that indicator.77

However, there is also clearly a movement, perhaps not yet fully developed, towards creating specific "human rights" indicators that are different from development indicators. For instance, one expert writing for the UN workshop on economic, social and cultural rights indicators, declared that "entirely new indicators" are required.78 Similarly, Tomasivski, writing in 1994, remarked that:

Economic and social policies which intergovernmental development finance agencies and individual governments are pursuing in practice do not necessarily match corresponding human rights; that is a national policy on education may not include the contents of the human right to education. Because the existing indicators derive from international and national policies rather than human rights, they cannot be used as if they were human rights indicators.79

Virginia Dandan, the current Chairperson of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, is cited in the Philrights Indicators volume as distinguishing between the two kinds of indicators: "Human development indicators are premised on, or oriented towards, goals, not towards rights."80

TLirk, after discussing the use of development indicators, remarks:

[T]the imperative of examining issues such as the quality of work, worker control and subjective elements of satisfaction and empowerment.... Applying traditional quantitative indicators to qualitative issues such as these may require new approaches within the human rights domain, approaches which human rights bodies and experts may be a good position to develop.81

There does not, however, appear yet to be a clear consensus on what, precisely, would distinguish a human rights indicator from a development indicator, except perhaps for the obvious need to have information that could reflect discrimination and for the emphasis on legislative and other legal processes.

In one respect, it is clear that indicators that take a snapshot of the current enjoyment by individuals and groups of access to food, health care,

77. ROUNDTABLE ON BENCHMARKS, supra note 27. 78. See Leckie, supra note 63. 79. Tomas'vski, supra note 44, at 389. 80. PHILRIGHTS, supra note 70, at 10. 81. Turk, Progress Report, supra note 30, at 10.




education, and other basic needs are highly relevant to the human rights community and are treated by it as crucially important. However, it is also clear that such information, in itself, is not enough to determine the actual state of economic, social and cultural rights in a country or for an individual.82

The issue needs to be discussed at greater length and remains one of the major gaps in the question of human rights indicators. It is possible that the solution will be found in a distinction that places the focus for human rights indicators on the obligations side of the human rights discourse, as discussed above. For instance, one possible distinction could be the following: "A human rights indicator is a means of determining the extent to which a government is complying with its obligations under human rights law. It is not (necessarily or only) a means of determining the extent to which individuals are enjoying access to basic needs-which would be a possible definition of a development indicator."

D. Distinctions Between Civil and Political Rights Indicators and Indicators for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

Is there is distinction in kind between indicators used for civil and political rights and indicators used for economic, social and cultural rights? At first glance, it appears as though there is indeed a difference between indicators used for civil and political rights and indicators used for economic, social and cultural rights. If there is a stereotype, it is that lists of indicators for civil and political rights tend to be of the "thematic" type described above and focus on governmental obligations, while lists of indicators for economic, social and cultural rights tend to be of the "statistics only" type and to focus on enjoyment of the rights.

When one looks more deeply into the actual literature and the monitoring procedures in place, however, the stereotype turns out to be

82. After this article was completed, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, (OCHR) in a report entitled: OCHR, HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEVELOPMENT: WHAT, WHY, How? (2000), made the following comments:

For ease of reference and coherence in global assessments, development agencies often employ quantitative measures of poverty, such as those setting a threshold of one or two dollars a day. Specific indicators relating to certain economic and social factors (e.g., infant mortality, literacy rates, etc.) are also employed. But many aspects of poverty, some of which are crucial to a human rights analysis, are not reflected in the statistical indicators. Foremost are the critical vulnerability and subjective daily assaults on human dignity that accompany poverty ... This recognition of the fundamental importance of participation and empowerment to effective development strategies must be seen as a further indication of the necessity of a rights-based approach.

Id. at 10.




false. In practice, bodies dealing with civil and political rights also make strong use of statistical information, and bodies dealing with economic, social and cultural rights often rely heavily on non-statistical information and take an obligations-side approach.

The confusion can be traced in part to a matter of vocabulary. For instance, the author of a recent book on reporting procedures at the UN Committee on Civil and Political Rights tells us that the word "indicator" is not often used in that Committee to refer to data relevant to the enjoyment of civil and political rights.83 However, she mentions that the Committee frequently refers to statistical information.

As this time, the Committee is in the course of adopting new reporting guidelines for member State Country Reports,84 so no further remarks on the existing guidelines for this Covenant will be made.85 Nevertheless, in its Concluding Observations the Committee has requested, inter alia, that states provide "qualitative and quantitative statistical data on the state of prisons"86; "statistics on complaints filed, prosecutions, convictions and sentences of members of the police and security forces for abuse of power"87; and "statistics on the participation of women in the conduct of public affairs.""88 Similarly, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), occasionally requires statistical information, such as when Committee members reviewing a report by Ecuador "requested specific data on the birth, death and life expectancy rates of indigenous populations as compared with the population as a whole."89

In the background paper prepared for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the indicators, that focus on civil and

83. Ineke Boerefijn, private communication to author, 14 June 1999. 84. For a critique of the use of indicators in the previous reporting guidelines for the ICCPR,

see Thomas B. Jabine, James P. Lynch, & Herbert S. Spirer, Statistics in an International Human Rights Treaty Report invited paper, American Statistical Ass'n, Proceedings of the Section on Government Statistics, 1995. (On file with author.)

85. The revised Reporting Guidelines of the Human Rights Committee were completed in July 1999, and revised in October 2000. The current version can be found in U.N. Doc. HRI/GEN/2/Rev.1, at 26. Paragraph C.6 states that "[a] report should include sufficient data and statistics to enable the Committee to assess progress in the enjoyment of Covenant rights, relevant to any appropriate article." Id. T1 C.6.

86. Concluding Remarks of the Human Rights Committee on the initial report of Zimbabwe, U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/79.Add.89, 4 Aug. 1998, S 18.

87. Concluding Remarks of the Human Rights Committee concerning the second periodic report of Sudan, U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/79/Add.85, 9 Nov. 1997, ? 17.

88. Concluding Remarks of the Human Rights Committee on the second periodic report of Egypt, U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/79/Add.23., 9 Aug. 1993, T 2. In this case, the Committee expressed regret that such information had not been included in Egypt's Country Report.

89. Report of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, U.N. Doc. no. A/ 48/18, 15 Sept. 1993, ? 131. Thanks to Dr. Ineke Boerefijn for assistance in locating the preceding examples.




political rights, include both indicators that are primarily statistical (such as the "increased [number] of polling stations") and indicators that are more "thematic" (such as "increased legislation relating to land rights, gender equality, [and] labour conditions").90

The Committee Against Torture uses statistical information as well. The chapter in the Manual on Human Rights Reporting tells us that "with regard to each individual article, the report should provide information on the legislative, administrative and judicial measures taken to give effect to the provisions of the article under consideration, as well as information on any concrete cases of the application of those measures. In all instances, available statistical information should be included."'9

The Committee on the Rights of the Child makes extensive use of statistical information: the Implementation Handbook tells us that "[t]he Committee has frequently noted that without sufficient data collection, including disaggregated data, it is impossible to assess the extent to which the Convention has been implemented."92 The list of statistical data requested leans heavily towards economic, social and cultural rights, but it includes data focused on civil and political rights as well, such as: "details of cases concerning children who have been deprived of their liberty, including the percentage of cases in which legal or other assistance has been provided. .. ."93

The Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women has also dealt with the issue of statistical information. This Committee's General Recommendations often address issues of information-gathering directly. Examples can be found in General Recommendation No. 9 ("Statistical Data concerning the Situation of Women"), which stresses the need to disaggregate by gender; and General Recommendation No. 1 7, (Measurement and Quantification of the Unremunerated Domestic Activi- ties of Women and Their Recognition in the Gross National Product) which recommends that state parties "encourage and support research and experimental studies to measure and value the unremunerated domestic activities of women; for example, by conducting time-use surveys as part of their national household survey programmes.... ."94

90. See Kapoor, supra note 39, at 16. 91. Joseph Voyame & Peter Burns, The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel,

Inhuman or degrading Treatment or Punishment, in MANUAL ON HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTING,

supra note 34, at 371. 92. HODGKIN & NEWELL, supra note 42, at 67. 93. Id. at 69. 94. Zagorka Ilic & Ivanka Corti, The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of

Discrimination Against Women, in MANUAL ON HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTING, supra note 34, at 311 & 337.




In its turn, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights requests a great deal of information that falls more into the "thematic indicators" category than the "statistics only" category. For instance, both the Committee's Reporting Guidelines and its other documents focus heavily upon legislation and other governmental measures. States are asked to describe for example, "the laws and practices in your country regarding rest, leisure, reasonable limitation of working hours periodic holidays with pay and remuneration for public holidays"9" and "the legal, administrative, and judicial system designed to respect and protect the freedom indispensable for scientific research and creative activity."96

However, some documents do indeed follow primarily one approach or the other. For instance, the "illustrative checklist of indicators for political freedom" in the Human Development Report 1992 is primarily "thematic" in nature. Similarly, the UNDAF CCA indicators for economic, social and cultural rights are primarily statistical in nature.

VII. THE ROLE OF HUMAN RIGHTS INDICATORS IN THE DEVELOPMENT DISCOURSE

There has been an increased interest, in recent years, in the role of human rights in the development process. One new book, published by the Australian Council on Human Rights, Inc. (and mentioned in section VI above) focuses explicitly on the role of human rights in the actions of development aid donors.97 The background paper on human rights indicators prepared for CIDA includes an interesting summary of the work of other national development agencies in developing human rights indicators for use in their programs. In fact, for those interested in producing a more detailed study on indicators, it would be well worth following up with those agencies to achieve practical knowledge of how indicators are being conceived among national development practitioners.

On a theoretical level, there has been valuable discussion, within the UN human rights and development communities and among NGOs, of how human rights can fit into the development process. UNDP, for instance, has recently issued a book on this subject and the UNDAF program appears to be the practical outcome of internal UN discussions. A few of the more

95. CESCR, Reporting Guidelines, supra note 42, art. 7 (5). 96. Implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights:

Compilation of Issues Relevant to the Examination of States Parties Reports (Informal paper prepared by the Secretariat) U.N. Doc. E/C.12/1996/REF, 1 May 1996, at 38.

97. See Francovits & Earle, supra note 70.




interesting theoretical statements, therefore, may be of interest to the narrower question of the role of human rights indicators in the development field. Three are given below:

1. The PhilRights report on economic, social and cultural rights indicators begins with the following statement, in the forward by Philip Alston:

There are two major stumbling blocks that obstruct the efforts of those who wish to give substance to the concept of economic, social, and cultural rights. The first is one of promoting the use of the appropriate terminology, and the second is one of establishing societal accountability.

The first stumbling block arises because of an insistence on the part of governmental officials and their counterparts in international organizations, that the language of rights is superfluous or unnecessary in relation to development issues. "It is lawyer's jargon," they tell us. Or, they say, "It only creates false hopes among the poor. .. ." Anyone who has spoken with development economists, government officials or experts from international agencies about economic and social rights will almost certainly have been told: "What does it matter if we call something a right, a need, a goal, an objective, or a target? It makes no difference, since we all want the same result!

The reality, of course, is that it makes a world of difference. Needs can be deferred until those in power think it might be timely to address them. Needs can be defined and formulated by experts; they are usually seen to be eminently flexible and relative .... Rights, on the other hand, belong to individuals, who can and will assert them and strive to give them meaning and substance. They can be neither expropriated, nor defined, nor arbitrarily put on the back burner, by officials.98

2. Again Alston, in the Benchmarks workshop:

A commitment to [economic, social and cultural] rights cannot be given effect solely by reference to surrogate terms such as poverty reduction, social exclusion, basic needs, human security and so on. While these all describe important issues and responses they lack the indispensable elements of a human rights framework. Simply expressed, those elements are: normative specificity, an accepted legal obligation, a commitment to the use of all

appropriate means, the provision of forms of redress in response to violations and the establishment of mechanisms of accountability at the national and international levels. The use of the terminology of economic, social and cultural

rights is thus essential.99

98. PHILRIGHTS, supra note 71, at 1-2. 99. Alston, ROUNDTABLE ON BENCHMARKS, supra note 27.




3. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, in a seminar paper delivered to Columbia University:

[I]ntroducing human rights into development analysis turns objectives and goals into rights and entitlements, responsibilities and accountability. Integrat- ing human rights into development opens up a whole new agenda-of strengthening the institutions, the consensus on norms, legal standards, and political processes to strengthen the mechanisms of enforcing entitlements and accountability.10"

VIII. CONCLUSION AND RECAP OF DISCUSSION POINTS

The field of human rights indicators is not a coherent one, and there remain a number of areas in which there is no theoretical consensus. In the beginning of the article five issues were identified that seemed to be the most important, whether because they were the most unclear or because they were in a practical sense the most useful within the context of the upcoming HDR.

The first question, "Is the word 'indicator' used within the human rights community to refer to information beyond statistical data?" was fairly straightforward, and it was answered in the affirmative in section V.

The second question, "Is there a difference in kind between indicators designed to measure economic, social and cultural rights and indicators designed to measure civil and political rights?" was more difficult. We concluded, in section VI above, that despite appearances there was in fact very little difference between the kinds of indicators used to measure the two categories of rights, with indicators of several kinds being applied in each case, even if not under the term "indicator."

The third question was not answered fully. The question was, "Is there a practical distinction to be made between indicators designed to measure states' compliance with their obligations under the various human rights treaties and indicators designed to measure individuals' and groups' enjoyment of their human rights under the various human rights treaties? If so, to what extent have effective indicators been developed to measure compliance and enjoyment respectively?" In section VI the answer was, in effect, that it was an open question in the field as to whether there was reason to choose one approach over the other, but that we saw practical reasons for leaning towards obligations-focused indicators. We gave several examples of indicators that reflect each of the two approaches, but did not attempt to evaluate their effectiveness. That is an issue for another, much longer study.

100. Fukuda-Parr, supra note 57, at 5-6.




The fourth question was, "Is there a distinction to be made between indicators concerning economic, social and cultural rights and indicators that measure levels of development or conditions of poverty?" Section VI demonstrated the various views in the current discourse and showed the confusion that exists in the field over this issue. A tentative suggestion was offered that a possible distinction might be found precisely in the emphasis on an obligations-based approach rather than an enjoyment-based one.

The fifth question, "What are the kinds of indicators currently being used by UN bodies, NGOs, and scholars with regard to the human rights guaranteed under the various international treaties?" was addressed in the course of the article rather than in any single section. In section IV we tried to show the current confusion between indicators based on statistics and indicators with a more thematic content. In section VI we talked about indicators that focus on states' actions and statistics that focus on people's experience. Throughout, we tried to give a wide-ranging number of indicators from NGOs, UN bodies, scholars, and others so as to present a general view of the kinds of indicators in use.



Documents

Current approaches to hr measurements green 2001