Opening Statement by Navi Pillay United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to the Launch of OHCHR publication: Human Rights Indicators - A Guide to Measurement and Implementation

Human Rights Indicators and the Post-2015 Development Agenda
New York
 

10 May 2013
New York, United States

Excellencies,
Distinguished panelists,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am happy to welcome you all to this New York launch of a new publication by my Office. Human Rights Indicators: A Guide to Measurement and Implementation responds to a longstanding demand that we develop and deploy appropriate statistical indicators in furthering the cause of human rights.

Twenty years ago, one of the recommendations of the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna was that we employ and analyze indicators to help measure our progress in human rights. Only robust and accurate statistics can establish the vital benchmarks and baselines that translate our human rights commitments into targeted policies, and only they can measure how effective those policies truly are.

Information on the number of persons with disabilities, the number of homeless people, the proportion of high-level positions held by women, the extent of killings, domestic violence or abuses by the police – these are just a few examples of the indicators that can bring clarity and focus to the goal of human rights implementation.

Indeed, the availability of accurate statistical information is a strong signal of openness to accountability in the public sphere, and this includes accountability for implementation and follow-up to public commitments to realize human rights for all.

Several years of research and consultation went into the development of this tool. It was guided by the principles adopted for the work of the Human Rights Council: universality, impartiality, objectivity and cooperation to strengthen the capacity of Member States in meeting their human rights obligations.

Thus we called on international and national human rights stakeholders, including experts from UN human rights mechanisms, UN agencies, statistical offices and civil society, to provide guidance. At regional and national workshops, governments, national human rights institutions, courts and NGOs helped develop and validate the methodology outlined in the Guide.

Moreover, as part of this process, I am very happy to report that follow-up initiatives to develop human rights indicators were launched in several countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. An example is the publication you have in front of you on on-going initiatives in Latin America which draw from the methodology outlined in the Guide.

The primary objective of the Guide is to spell out the essential attributes of the rights enshrined in international instruments, in order to help stakeholders construct participatory processes that will enable them to translate this into contextually relevant quantitative and qualitative indicators.

I would like to emphasize that the Guide is neither designed, nor is it suitable for ranking States based on an overall human rights performance. Neither is it a substitute for more comprehensive and judicial human rights assessments.

Rather, it is an attempt to further the construction of frameworks of measurement that are more responsive to human rights. At a time of social and political crisis in many regions of the world, we believe this will be a useful contribution. This brings me to the relevance of the Guide to the discussions on the Post-2015 development agenda.

Progress in the Millennium Development Goals, has often been dogged by alarming inequalities within and between countries, as well as by political repression and deeply entrenched discrimination. Several of the “MDG success stories” are now sites of mass protest and violence.

Ultimately, the MDGs have been at best a crude proxy for human well-being. A more balanced and holistic vision is needed, protecting freedom from fear as well as freedom from want. In the process of selecting the MDGs, we “treasured what we measured” – and perhaps that was the wrong way round. Rather, as has been observed, we should measure what we treasure.

The human rights indicators Guide starts with a review of international human rights law and highlights standards and mechanisms that can help us focus on the ends of development consistent with universally accepted human rights.

Ladies and gentlemen,

We are convinced that continued engagement, dialogue and cooperation among the human rights, statistical and policy-making communities will help us in improving the measurement and implementation of human rights, as one of the three pillars of the United Nations.

I would like to thank the Permanent Missions of Finland and Mexico for co-hosting this event. I would like also to thank the panelists for sharing their insights as experts on the topic of “Human rights indicators and the Post-2015 development agenda”.

I welcome you, and I look forward to the discussion

Thank you.