Measuring human rights

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Measuring human rights

• Purpose of measurement
• Levels of measurement
• Categories and dimensions
• Objects of measurement
• Problems of measurement

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Purposes of measurement

• Contextual description
• Monitoring
• Documentation
• Classification
• Types of regime
• Types of governance
• Types of rights violations
• Mapping (time and space)
• Global trends
• Regional
• Local
• Secondary analysis
• Academic research
• Policy research
• Political dialogue

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Levels of social scientific measurement
Adapted from Zeller and Carmines 1980 Munck and
Verkuilen 2000 Adcock and Collier 2001 Ball and
Spirer 2000
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Measuring Example
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Categories and dimensions of human rights

• Categories
• Civil rights
• Political rights
• Economic rights
• Social rights
• Cultural rights
• Solidarity rights
• Dimensions
• Protect
• Respect
• Fulfil

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Objects of measurement

• Principle (de jure)
• International legal
• National legal
• Practice (de facto)
• Events-based
• Standards-based
• Dichotomous categories
• Polychotomous scales
• Survey-based
• Hybrid measures
• Policy
• Input
• Process
• Output
• Outcome

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Principle (de jure) measurement

• Code treaty participation (scale)
• No signature (0)
• Signature (1)
• Ratification (2)
• Ratification with reservations (weighting)
• Code national constitutions (n or scale)
• Articles on civil rights
• Articles on political rights
• Articles on economic rights
• Articles on social rights
• Articles on cultural rights

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International de jure human rights
Landman (2005) Protecting Human Rights A
Comparative Study, Washington DC Georgetown
University Press
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International de jure rights coding reservations

• Rewarding the absence of reservations
• Countries with no reservations with regard to
  said treaty that do not modify obligations, or
  non-substantial declarations (score 4)
• Countries whose reservations could have some but
  not major impact on their obligations (score 3)
• Countries whose reservations have noticeable
  effect on the obligations (score 2)
• Countries whose reservations can have significant
  and severe effects on treaty obligations (score
  1)
• The ratification score
• No signature (0)
• Signature (1)
• Ratification (2)
• Weighting the ratification score
• Weighted Ratification Ratification score
  (0,1,2) Reservations score (1,2,3,4)
• High score ratification with fewer substantial
  reservations
• Low score ratification with more substantial
  reservations

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International de jure rights ICCPR with and
without reservations
Landman (2005) Protecting Human Rights A
Comparative Study, Washington DC Georgetown
University Press
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International de jure rights ICCPR with
reservations
Landman (2005) Protecting Human Rights A
Comparative Study, Washington DC Georgetown
University Press
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Domestic de jure civil and political rights
Source van Maarseveen and Tang (1978)
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Domestic de jure economic and social rights
Source van Maarseveen and Tang (1978)
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Practice (de facto) measurement

• Events-based
• Standards-based
• Survey-based
• Hybrid

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De facto measurement events-based methodology
for human rights

• Disaggregated events (who did what to whom)
• Act
• Violation(s)
• Perpetrator
• Victim
• Context
• When
• Where
• Controlled vocabularies
• Aggregated event counts
• Multiple sources of information

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De facto measurement events-based data model
Source http//shr.aaas.org/hrdag/idea/datamodel/i
ndex.html
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Measuring de facto rights events-based example
in Kosovo
Estimated total refugee migration and killings
over time, in Kosovo
Source Patrick Ball and Jana Asher
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Measuring de facto rights events-based example
in Peru, 1980-2000
Source http//shr.aaas.org/hrdag/project-38.php
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Measuring de facto rights events-based example
for abuse against Human Rights Defenders,
1997-2000
Source Landman (2006)Holding the Line Human
Rights Defenders in the Age of Terror, British
Journal of Politics and International Relations,
Vol. 8..
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De facto measurement standards-based methodology

• Ideal standards
• Legal instruments
• Conceptual definition
• Democracy
• Good governance
• Human rights
• Empirical information
• Monitoring bodies
• Human rights treaty bodies
• NGOs (e.g. Amnesty International/Human Rights
  Watch)
• Governments (e.g. US State Department)
• Newspapers
• Historical accounts/narratives
• Coding
• Dichotomous categories
• ACLP
• Doorenspleet
• Polychotomous scales
• Freedom House

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De facto measurement standards-based scales of
rights
Landman (2005) Protecting Human Rights A
Comparative Study, Washington DC Georgetown
University Press
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De facto rightsStandards-based measures across
space
Landman (2005) Protecting Human Rights A
Comparative Study, Washington DC Georgetown
University Press
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De facto measurement standards-based scales of
political and civil rightsCingranelli and
Richards (CIRI) data set
www.humanrightsdata.com
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De facto measurement standards-based scales of
womens and workers rightsCingranelli and
Richards (CIRI) data set
www.humanrightsdata.com
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De facto measurement survey-based methodology

• Sample of the population
• VIPs
• Quota sample
• Random
• Standardised questions
• Reponses
• Open
• Closed

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De facto measurement survey-based measure of
human rights
World Values Survey (1994) question on support
for the idea of human rights in 1990 across
eight countries (1002 ? N ? 2095).
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De facto measurement survey-based measure of
human rights
Physicians for Human Rights (2002) N 991 IDPs
in Sierra Leone
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Policy indicators

• Input
• Process
• Performance
• Output
• Outcome
• Perception

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Policy indicators input

• Provision of resources
• Spending in education
• Spending on health service
• Spending on housing

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Policy indicators process

• Health
• Number of patients seen per day
• Waiting lists
• Average journey time to hospital
• Water
• Time it takes to access clean water
• Number of trips to water source needed per day

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Policy indicators performance

• Health
• Time it takes to build new hospitals
• Time it takes to deliver new beds
• Time it takes to train and recruit new doctors
• Water
• Time it takes to provide a water connection
• Time it takes to build a sewerage system

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Policy indicators output

• Health
• Number of doctors per 100,000
• Number of hospital beds per 100,000
• Number of hospitals per geographical area
• Water
• Households with access to water within 200m of
  dwelling
• Increase in quality of water

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Policy indicators outcome

• Health
• Infant mortality rates
• Longevity rates
• New HIV/AIDs cases
• Water
• Level of water born diseases
• Infant mortality rate

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Policy indicators perception

• Attitudinal data
• Surveys
• Feedback questionnaires
• Can evaluate inputs, process, and outputs

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Problems of measurement

• Validity
• Reliability
• Measurement bias
• Lack of transparency
• Variance truncation
• Information bias
• Aggregation problems