The OPERA Framework Summary To increase accountability for failures to fulfill economic, social and cultural rights (ESC rights), it is necessary to uncover the shortcomings in a state’s social and economic policies that lead to largescale deprivations. This serves to expose as a preventable injustice what may otherwise be seen as an inevitable consequence of under-development. Holding institutions to account for these failures, through both judicial and non-judicial processes, is an essential step towards providing remedies to those affected. Accountability processes can, in turn, allow policy-makers to know what works so that it can be repeated and what does not, so that it can be adjusted. Yet human rights practitioners and activists face significant challenges in clearly demonstrating the complex causal links between poor human rights outcomes and shortcomings in states’ policy efforts. Such shortcomings are often systemic and entrenched, arising from institutional failures rather than the wrongdoings of individual officials. Attributing state responsibility for chronic problems, such as high rates of maternal death, involves more complex analysis of the link between conduct and result than establishing state accountability in acute cases, such as torture or forced eviction. Relevant international standards against which to judge the adequacy of states’ actions are themselves multifaceted and not always clearly defined and easily measurable. Nevertheless, significant progress has been made in recent years. On the conceptual side, understanding of the nature and scope of the rights and obligations enshrined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) has been increasingly elaborated, particularly through interpretations by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; jurisprudence of national courts and regional adjudication bodies; and increasing engagement between human rights and development experts. On the methodological side, a variety of different actors have developed or adapted tools and techniques to monitor ESC rights fulfillment, moving beyond conventional ‘events-based’ monitoring towards new qualitative and quantitative methods, including analyses employing statistics, indicators, indices, etc. While these tools and techniques offer considerable advances, they have tended to be developed in a fragmented way, by different actors, and in isolation from each other. Accordingly, they have generally demonstrated strengths in measuring a specific element of the obligation to fulfill, but used on their own do not fully capture the range of human rights principles and standards that underpin the obligation. This paper presents a practical framework for integrating different tools and techniques in order to provide a more comprehensive assessment of how public policies comply with the obligation to fulfill ESC rights. The OPERA framework (so called because it triangulates Outcomes, Policy Efforts and Resources to make an overall Assessment) articulates relevant human rights standards and