Center for Economic and Social Rights : Monitoring

Monitoring: A Methodological Toolkit for holding governments accountable

Demand Accountability!

NGOs and other advocates need practical tools and publications on how to monitor the realization and demand accountability for denials and violations of economic and social rights.

CESR believes that governments must be held accountable to their obligations under international law to respect, protect and fulfill economic, social and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights.

Holding governments accountable for their ESC rights obligations has however proved to be a serious challenge for human rights advocates. While traditional human rights methodologies (developed for civil and political rights) can work for monitoring the obligations to respect and protect ESC rights, it is not possible to use traditional human rights monitoring tools to monitor the state's positive obligation to fulfil ESC rights.

This is because ESC rights are subject to 'progressive realization' and the 'maximum of available resources'. But how can these be measured and monitored? CESR has been working to develop new methodologies that fill this gap. Here you can find a series of discussion papers that address these issues.

Comments are welcome. Write to us at rights@cesr.org.

A new frontier in economic and social rights advocacy?

Developing rigorous monitoring tools has been an uphill battle for those working on advancing economic and social rights. CESR offers a contribution to that ongoing work with this new publication.

A Framework for Accountability: A 4-step methodology to end impunity for economic and social rights denials

This brief overview provides a short introduction to the methodology that CESR has developed for assessing government efforts to meet their obligations towards economic and social rights. The four-step framework uses tools developed and discussed in the other discussion papers here.

Measuring Economic and Social Rights to Hold Governments Accountable

This CESR contribution to the OECD Journal on Development "Measuring Human Rights and Democratic Governance: Experiences and Lessons from Metagora" presents a framework for measuring economic and social rights

How can we measure and monitor non-discrimination?

Non-discrimination is a key human rights principle. But how can we measure whether government policies are meeting this objective? This discussion paper examines the tools used by social scientists to measure inequalities between different population groups to see how this can be applied in human rights work to hold governments accountable to the principle of non-discrimination.

How can we use quantitative methods to monitor government compliance with their ESC rights obligations?

This discussion paper by Edward Anderson, lecturer in development economics at the University of East Anglia, examines how quantitative methods of economics could be incorporated into human rights work in order to assess the compliance of governments with their human rights obligations.

Developing an ESC rights index: Measuring the fulfilment of ESC rights

CESR Board member Sakiko Fukuda-Parr introduces the idea of an index to measure the fulfillment of ESC rights. She proposes two different methodologies that could be used to try to capture and measure the progressive realization of human rights subject to available resources.

CESR factsheets: Making Human Rights Accountability More Graphic

CESR has produced a range of fact sheets in its series 'Visualizing Rights' which aims to illustrate how some of the tools can be used in a visual way to present a graphic picture of statistics and indicators that help to assess whether governments are complying with their ESC rights obligations.

Other Links and Resources for Monitoring ESC Rights

Many other organizations and individuals are also working on developing new methodologies for monitoring human rights. Find links to their work here. Please also send us any links that you think would be useful for others and we will add them.

Databases: Statistics and Indicators for Monitoring ESC rights

International statistical databases that provide international and national statistics and key indicators that you can use in monitoring ESC rights.