•
Outcome indicators that measure whether the agreement may make it more difficult to make
progress in the realization of the human rights it has undertaken to comply with, from the
perspective of full enjoyment of all human rights by all.72
Further, the draft guiding principles add that it is essential that these indicators provide information
disaggregated by gender, disability, age group, region, ethnicity, or other grounds, in order to reflect
the human rights principle of non-discrimination and pay due attention to the situation of the most
disadvantaged groups, particularly women, based on a contextual, country-level appreciation of
vulnerability.73 Importantly, the draft guiding principles recognize that negotiating such agreements
is not technocratic. It involves setting priorities and making trade-offs, the role of HRIAs being to
clarify the nature of such choices and to better inform both the substance and process of agreeing
on and managing such trade-offs, which must be open and democratic, ensuring the participation of
civil society and potentially affected communities.74
Towards a comprehensive framework
for monitoring ESC rights fulfillment
In response to the important conceptual progress that has been made to better understand the
nature and scope of rights and obligations under the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, a vast array of innovative techniques and tools have been developed or adapted to measure
these concepts. As highlighted in the above discussion, these represent major steps forward in the
drive to operationalize the standards and principles that underpin the obligation to fulfill, and provide
tremendous resources for human rights advocates in efforts to secure justice for victims of systemic
ESC rights violations.
CESR’s experience of applying quantitative tools in the context of socio-economic policy analysis and
advocacy in specific settings has highlighted the need to use a variety of such techniques eclectically.
Depending solely on one technique paints only a partial, and sometimes misleading, picture of
compliance. For example, budget analysis used in isolation may not shed light on broader fiscal policy
failures. Frameworks of human rights indicators, to date, capture the concept of maximum available
resources less comprehensively than other human rights norms and standards. To the extent that
certain tools and techniques are developed independently of, rather than complementary to, one
another, opportunities for more holistic mixed-methods approaches are missed. The tendency to
‘fetishize’ particular techniques, especially quantitative ones, is also very tempting, with a number of
unintended risks and consequences.
First, there is a risk that ‘perfecting’ the particular tool or technique becomes an end unto itself, the
danger being that the tool becomes overly-complicated and inaccessible to the intended user. There
have been relatively few attempts to take stock of the lessons learned regarding the applicability of
different tools in practice and the extent to which they can assist monitoring and advocacy efforts
in the challenging real-world environments faced by many human rights advocates. While there has
been a lot of focus on the theory behind human rights indicators—as well as the creation of wideranging lists of potential indicators for various rights—the application of indicators in human rights
Assessing compliance with the obligation to fulfill economic, social and cultural rights
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