rights’.36 This paradigm shift can also be seen in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which select specific indicators, for which statistical data is regularly collected in order to measure progress over time. Within the human rights field, the idea that indicators should play a role in monitoring progress on the implementation of human rights treaties is not new and is recognized in a number of treaty provisions, general comments and non-binding declarations.37 Recently, there has been increasing interest in the development of standardized international human rights indicators. In 2006, at the request of the chairpersons of the treaty bodies, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) presented a background paper on how quantitative data could be used to make the assessment of states’ performance more streamlined, transparent, temporally and spatially comparable, and effective.38 The conceptual framework proposed by OHCHR centers on three types of indicators: structural, process and outcome. Structural indicators reflect treaty ratification, the adoption of legal instruments and the existence of basic institutional mechanisms to facilitate realization of the right concerned. Process indicators connect public programs and specific interventions to milestones more directly related to the realization of human rights, for example by measuring goods and services against the AAAAQ criteria. Finally, outcome indicators capture the realization, individual and collective, of human rights in a given context.39 Since 2006, OHCHR has been validating the framework and its lists of illustrative indicators with country-level stakeholders,40 as well as providing technical assistance on the framework and developing resource materials and tools to help disseminate and operationalize it.41 One of the significant breakthroughs of the OHCHR framework is its clear conceptualization of human rights indicators as indicators that specifically relate to human rights norms and standards. The framework recognizes that socio-economic indicators, which assess whether people are living with dignity and freedom (measuring outcomes or results), can be used as human rights indicators when they are applied to measure a particular human rights norm. For example, when disaggregated by gender, ethnicity, race, religion, nationality, birth, social origin and other relevant distinctions socioeconomic indicators may provide pointers to uncover discrimination and inequality. But, importantly, the framework also emphasizes the need to identify further indicators that assess the state’s policies and programs and the behavior of public officials (measuring conduct, as well as result) in order to capture the full spectrum of states’ obligations. So while development indicators and human rights indicators may at times be indistinguishable, they differ in their purpose, use and interpretation. The OHCHR indicator framework has been taken up and expanded on by other international monitoring mechanisms. At the regional level, the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, for example, has followed the framework in developing guidelines for reporting under Article 19 of the Protocol of San Salvador.42 The guidelines follow the structure, process, outcome approach, but they further categorize these indicators around three conceptual categories (incorporation of the right, state capabilities and basic financial context and budgetary commitments)43 and around four cross-cutting issues (equality, access to justice, access to information and participation).44 In addition, the guidelines emphasize the need to complement quantitative indicators with ‘qualitative signs of progress’ that allow for a deeper analysis of the policies and programs the indicators identify.45 Similarly, the Economic and Social Rights Working Group of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights is in the early stages of developing guidelines on ESC rights for states for the preparation of periodic reports.46 Assessing compliance with the obligation to fulfill economic, social and cultural rights 7