The OPERA Framework Reports, or multilateral agency databases, such as the UN and World Bank. As a guiding principle, however, affected communities should play a central role in the selection of indicators so as to ensure that indicators meaningfully reflect their concerns, assessment needs and priorities. Importantly, what makes this a human rightsbased analysis is that the information is then interrogated in light of human rights principles and standards. As discussed above, in monitoring the level of enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights through the use of indicators, it is necessary to judge this information against a benchmark that can give guidance on the adequacy of a state’s performance or where a state should be in its fulfillment of the rights in question given its capacity. Specifically, indicators should be assessed against benchmarks that reflect human rights principles and standards. Relevant standards for judging outcome indicators include (a) minimum core obligations, (b) nondiscrimination, and (c) progressive realization or, conversely, non-retrogression. Assessing Outcomes in the ‘Rights or Privileges?’ Project As the first step in the study, CESR and ICEFI selected appropriate outcome indicators to act as proxies for the rights to food, health and education, focusing on child chronic malnutrition, maternal mortality and primary education completion for reasons of data availability, political/MDG relevance and research manageability. We compared this data to that of countries in the region with comparable levels of GDP per capita; we sought disaggregated data on grounds of gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, region and urban/rural location; and traced progress on the indicators over time, at the aggregate level and between groups. We found Guatemala was still very far from satisfying what could reasonably be considered minimum essential levels of these rights for the entire population: half the population under five suffered from chronic malnutrition; over 60% of children did not complete primary school at the appropriate age; and maternal mortality rates were comparable to some of the poorest countries in the region such as Bolivia. Disaggregation revealed persistent disparities in the enjoyment of rights. Comparing these indicators over time showed that Guatemala had made slower progress in these indicators than similarly situated countries and that disparities had increased in some cases as progress was slowest among disadvantaged groups. In some cases, it may be possible to identify indicators that reflect the content of minimum core obligations, which have been defined and elaborated for many rights. For example, Article 13 of the Covenant provides that ‘primary education shall be compulsory and available free to all’. Ensuring the satisfaction of this ‘minimum essential level’ of education is a minimum core obligation according to the Committee. So an indicator to monitor this obligation could be primary completion rates in a country. To satisfy this minimum core obligation, a state should ideally have a completion rate of 100%, though for states with limited resources this benchmark is often unattainable. Thus, in order to judge the gap between such a benchmark and a state’s actual performance in practice, CESR has often used regional comparisons as reference points. In this approach, a country’s performance on a particular indicator is assessed vis-à-vis its neighbors, regional averages, or other countries with similar characteristics, such as available resources. Comparing the enjoyment of these minimum essential levels to countries at similar levels of development can help evaluate the reasonableness of variations from 100% attainment of these minimum essential levels, demonstrating the importance of the prioritization of resources for meeting minimum core obligations, and exposing outlier governments. 16