How should the realization of human rights be quantified? Since World War II, international human rights treaties have become the foundation of international conceptualizations of human rights. These treaties create legally binding obligations for member states to respect, protect, and fulfill the human rights they contain. However, holding states accountable to their obligations necessitates the creation of measures of human rights performance. These measures must honor the fullness of the entitlements contained in the documents, should be comparable across contexts and time periods, and must reflect the reality of individuals’ lived experiences – a challenging task. The chapter examines the evolution of global, composite measures of two categories of human rights: civil and political rights and economic and social rights. We also explore the strengths and weaknesses of the most common measurement approaches to each, discuss how the work of the Human Rights Measurement Initiative addresses some of these challenges, and identify important gaps in measurement efforts that remain unaddressed.
Watson, K. A., Rains, M., Bagwell, S., & Clay, K. C. (2024). A comparative assessment of composite measures of Human Rights Performance. Research Methods in Human Rights, 225–248. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781803922614.00024
