THE SCOPE OF HUMAN RIGHTS: BACKGROUND CONCEPTS TO INDICATORS*

TODD LANDMAN

I. INTRODUCTION

This article examines the logical and operational connection bet­ween human rights concepts and human rights indicators, the combination of which is essential for human rights measure­ment. The international human rights, policy, and donor com­munities have long sought to establish the full content of hu­man rights that ought to be promoted and protected, while less progress has been made on providing meaningful, valid, and reliable measures of human rights. Advocacy for new standards and greater state participation in the international human rights "regime"l as well as the monitoring and alerting of human rights violations has often times occurred in isolation from mea-

* This article initially appeared as a background paper for a meeting of in­ternational experts on the use of indicators for monitoring state compliance by the various United Nations treaty bodies held at Abo Akademi in Turku, Finland in March 2005. I am grateful to Eibe Eidel, Matthew Sudders, Joachim Nahem, Martin Sheinin, Rajeev Malhotra, and Nicolas Fasel. It also draws on extensive discussions held at a special workshop on measuring human rights held at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Chicago Sep­tember 2004. I am grateful to Patrick Ball, Steven Poe, David Cingranelli, Ronald Francisco, Claudia Dahlerus, David Richards, Mark Gibney, Daniel Ho, Christian Davenport, Jon Gould, and Shareen Hertel. Parts of the argument and analysis contained in this article appear in Landman, T. "Measuring Human Rights: Principle, Practice and Police". Human Rights Quarterly. No. 26, November 2004, pp. 906-931. Landman, T. "Review Article: the Political Science of Human Rights". British Journal of Political Science, July 2005. Landman, T. Protecting Human Rights: A Comparative Study. Washington, D.C., Georgetown University Press, 2005. Landman, T. Studying Human Rights. Abingdon and New York, Routledge, 2006. Reprinted with permission from Routledge © 2006. All rights reserved.

1 Donnelly, J. Universal Human Rights in Theon} and Practice. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2nd Edition, 2003. Landman, T. Protecting Human Rights: A Global Comparative Study. Washington D.C., Georgetown University Press, 2005.

109

110 REvrSTA IBEROAMERICANA DE DERECHOS

surement efforts and secondary academic analysis, both of seek to provide standardised methods for representing the ation in human rights protection. Over the last decade and tainly since the 2000 United Nations Development (UNDP) Human Development Report, there has been an . convergence within the development and human lights of the United Nations system in realising the need for a human rights indicators (HRls). From the side of 'ntP'''''',~~. development, the demand for HRIs comes from the need to stream human rights into development projects and to and implement a rights-based approach (HRBA) to more generally. From the side of human rights, the demand come from recognition among the human rights treaty ing bodies, the Office of the United Nations High sioner for Human Rights, and a variety of Special on the need to develop HRIs to monitor state compliance human rights treaty obligations.2 In addition, key actors the human rights Non Governamental Organizations have not only taken on board the measurement agenda set political scientists, sociologists, economists, and statisticians, but have surpassed these academic communities in some degree with respect to the measurement of certain human rights.4

In order to illustrate how human rights indicators are linked to human rights concepts, this article is divided into four sec­tions. The first section describes the scope of human rights that includes both their different categories and dimensions. The sec­ond section explains how social scientific measurement moves through four different levels ranging from general background concepts to specific scores on specific human rights across specific units of analysis (e.g. a high score on civil rights CR? in country X in year T; or the number of incidences of torture committed by perpetrator X at time 1). The third section discusses extant

2 In particular, Paul Hunt, Special Rapporteur for the Right to Health has made a strong cases for developing right to health indicators in his various re­ports to the UN General Assembly (see N58/427/2003 and N59/422/2004).

3 For example, the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, many of whom are now based at the Benetech Initiative in PaIo Alto <http://www.martus.org>, and Physicians for Human Rights.

4 See Landman, T. "Review Article: the Political Science of Human Rights". British Journal of Political Science. Vol. 35, No.3, July, 2005.

OF HUMAN RIGHTS 0 TODD LANDMAN 111

of human rights, including those th~~. measu~e :~i~~:S (i e de jure state commitment), m prac Ice ."

realis~tion), and as feat.ures ofh gover~~g~~:t p~~!~CZ

h have a beanng on uman . t at may and outcomes).s The fourth and final

(i.e. ~nputs, oU~P~:~aining lacunae that ought to be ad-dIScusses t e th human rights measurement in order to move e forward.

II. THE SCOPE OF HUMAN RIGHTS

. f f h man rights are a set I their contemporary mam esta lOn, u f 11 1'0-

in~ividual and co~e~~ive ri~~:t!~~~:;;:l :~~ d~::stk )aw and protecte roug R' hts (Univer-

the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human. Ig d iola-Declaration). Arguments, theories, p~otect~ons, a~ v uch

of such rights, however, have been ~n eXlstenc~ol~ti: of 6 but since the Universal Declaratio~, the e the nu-

express leg~l protectio~ has gr~:;:~P~~~h't:o;~~ulgated international treaties on . ' lie

the Universal Declaration to which an mcreasmg ~ a:~f b f nation states are a party define the core ~on en ..

num er ? ht that ought to be protected across categones of cIvil, human ng s lid 't . hts 7 political, economic, social, and so an y ng .

2.1. Categories OJ Human Rights

The collection of human rights protected by inte:national law draws on a longer of tradition of rights from phIlosophy,

d T "Measuring Human Rights: Principle, Practice, and Po-S See Lan man, . b 2004 P 906-931.

Iiey". Human Rights Quarterly. ;6 N~::ic~ Moder of Human Rights Develop-6 See e.g. Claude, R. P. The. Ri hts Baltimore and London,

ment". In: Claude, R.P. (ed.) Comparatzve HlIm~n land T. Landman Citizenship Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976; Fower: S~~tis'tical Analysis. Oxford, Oxford Rights and Social Movements: A Comparatzve a~ Human Rights: All Interdisciplinary University Press,. 1997, PP: 1-45; Freema~4_54' Ishay, M. The Histonj of HU!llan Approach. Cambndge, Pohty, 200~, bPr t' E a Berkeley University of Califor­Rights: From Ancient Times to the G 0 ~ lza~o~;Ju;tifying Hu~an Rights ... , op. cit. nia Press, 2004; Sorell, T. and T. Lan ~a h~s Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) at the

7 See For example, the Human g t f S l'ence many of whom are now .. f th Advaneemen 0 c , d

American AssoClation or . ~. . P 1 Alto <http://w.vw.martus.org>.an based at the Benetech Imtiahve mao Physicians for Human Rights.

112 REVISTA IBEROAMERICANA DE DERECHOS

history, and normative political the . sets, or categories of rights th t h ory and now Includes for talking about hum . 1 a ave become useful ners in the field and ~~ ~Ig 1tS among scholars and this article. Th:se th WI e use~ throughout the rights, (2) economic re~ lcategones are: (1) civil and rights. It has been' soc~a , and cultural rights, and (3) .

certai~ groups are b~!r~~:ll~f ~ndersto~d that i~dividuals the pnme organ that urn an nghts, while the The political sOciologyca~ r;:otect ar:d!or violate human struggles by oppressed ou uman ng~ts argues that ~rotection for larger s~s ~fs ~a;.e .~elded a greater degree nghts have not alwa s b In IVI uals and groups atte.mpt to construct a n:~:~t~~nte~d while the state itself, pacIty to govern, has extende 1 ~ntIty .and strengthen its creasingly larger sectors of d :ranous nghts protections to rights and contempor soclety.8 The struggle for motion and protectio arY

h arguments about their continued

t. n ave extended b d . IOn on the legal obligations of . eyon exclusIve atten_

focussing on how nation states and have started non-state actors su h .

ments, terrorist organisaf ,c as guernlla move. tions, and international ~~~~~i~a:lor~s, .multi-national corpora_ as responsible for human right Ir:siIt~tions, may be conceived ties may carry an obli ation f s vlO.atIons and how such enti­ent categories of hum!n . h or theIr p~otection.9 These differ-

Civil and p l't' I . ng ts are consIdered in turn o I lca nghts u h Id h . .

ual before the law and ara po. t e sanctIty of the individ-freely in civil, economFc an~tee ~I~ or her. ability to participate c~ude such rights as the;i ht t P~~hC~l socIety. Civil rights in­nty; the right to equality t f 0 h e, liberty, and personal secu­from arbitrary arrest. th ~ ore t e law; the right of protection right to a fair trial' a~d tehng~thto the .d~e process of law; the h · W ' e ng t to reh01 0 f d SIp. hen protected "1 . h o~ us ree om and wor-

,CIVI ng ts guarant ' " ee one s personhood"

8 Foweraker, J. and T Land . . . 9 See Forsythe D P H ma,n. Clt.lzenslllp Rights ... , op. cit.

g~:bridge Universi~ P~e~s :~~1l P~g~~l ~j1 Inter~ational Relations. Cambridge . ce and the United Nations Offic' f - 4; U,mted Nations Global Compact

~8~ts. ~mbedding Human Rights in BU~i::esst~e ~~gh ~ommissioner for Human Ab' . < ttp://www.unglobalcompactor >. L rac Ice. ew York, United Nations Ro~~f~on and New York, Routledge g2006 a~dm~n, T. St~dyillg Human Rights:

e ge © 2006. All rights reserved.' . eprmted with permission from

SCOPE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 0 TODD LANDlvlAN 113

freedom from state-sanctioned interference or violence. Po­rights include such rights as the right to speech and ex­

. the rights to assembly and association; and the right and political participation. Political rights thus guarantee

rights to involvement in public affairs and the affairs ate. In many ways, both historically and theoretically, civil political rights have been considered fundamental human

for which all nation states have a duty and responsibility uphold.lO They have also been seen as so-called "negative"

since they merely require the absence of their violation in

to be upheld. Social and economic rights include such rights as the right

a family; the right to education; the right to health and well the right to work and fair remuneration; the right to

form trade unions and free associations; the right to leisure .time; and the right to social security. When protected, these rights help promote individual flourishing, social and economic

and self-esteem. Cultural rights, on the other hand, include such rights as the right to the benefits of culture; the right to indigenous land, rituals, and shared cultural prac­tices; and the right to speak one's own language and "mother tongue" education. Cultural rights are meant to maintain and promote sub-national cultural affiliations and collective identi­ties, and protect minority communities against the incursions of national assimilationist and nation-building projects. In contrast to the first set of rights, this second set of social, economic, and cultural rights is often seen as an aspirational and program­matic set of rights that national governments ought to strive to achieve through progressive implementation. They have thus been considered less fundamental than the first set of rights and are seen as "positive" rights whose realisation depends heavily on the fiscal capacity of states,!1

10 Davidson, S. Human Rights. Buckingham, Open University Press, 1993, pp. 39-45; Donnelly, J. International Human Rights. Boulder and Westview, 1998, pp. 18-35; Forsythe, D.P. Human Rights in ... , op. cit., pp. 28-52.

11 Davidson, S. Human Riglzts ... , op .cit; Harris, D. "Regional Protection of Human Rights: The Inter-American Achievement". In: Harris, D. and S. Living­stone (eds.) The Inter-American System of Human Rights. Oxford, Oxford Univer­sity Press, 1998, pp. 9; See also Foweraker, J. and T. Landman. Citizenship Rights ... , op. cit., pp. 14-17.

114 REVISTA IBEROAMERICANA DE DERECHOS HUMANOS • 2

Solidarity rights, which include rights to public goods such as development and the environment, seek to guarantee that all individuals and groups have the right to share in the benefits of the earth's natural resources, as well as those goods and prod~ ucts that are made through processes of economic growth, ex­pansion, and innovation. Many of these rights are transnational in that they make claims against wealthy nations to redistribute wealth to poor nations, cancel or reduce international debt obli. gations, pay compensation for past imperial and colonial adven.; tures, reduce environmental degradation, and help promote p~lici:s for s~stainable development. Of the three sets of rights, thIS final set IS the newest and most progressive and reflects a certain reaction against the worst effects of globalization, as well as the relative effectiveness of "green" political ideology and so­cial mobilization around concerns for the health of the planet

2.2. Dimensions of Human Rights

The distinction between these sets of rights follows the torical struggle for them,12 the appearance of the separate national instruments that protect them, the philosophical ments concerning their status, and the methodological surrounding their measurement,13 These categories and rights that are contained within them are by now well to the human rights community and may seem superfluous an article such this one, but two significant developments in field that expand on this brief delineation of human rights important to consider for the issue of rights measurement. significant sections of the human rights community have lenged the traditional distinctions between "generations" of man rights and have sought to establish the general claim

12 Marshall, T. H. "Citizenship and Social Class". In: Marshall, T.H. 10gl) at the Crossroads and Other Essays, London, Heinemann, 1963; Claude, "The Classical Model of Human Rights Development ... , op. cit.; Barbalet, J. M. zenship: Rights, Struggle and Class Inequality. Milton Keynes, Open Press, 1988; Davidson, S. Human Rights ... , op. cit.

13 See Claude, R. P. and T.B. Jabine. "Exploring Human Rights Statistics". In: Jabine, T.B. and R.P. Claude (eds.) Human Rights Getting the Record Straight. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania pp. 5-34; Foweraker, J. and T. Landman. Citizenship Rights ... , op. cit., pp; Landman, T. "Measuring Human Rights" ... , op. cit.

THE SCOPE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 0 TODD LANDMAN 115

all rights are indivisible and mutually reinforcing, a sentiment that found formal expression in the 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action.14 Such a challenge suggests that it is impossible to talk about certain sets of human rights in isola­tion, since the protection of one right may be highly contingent on the protection of other rights. For example, full protection of the right to vote is largely meaningless in societies that do not have adequate health, education, and social welfare provision, since high rates of illiteracy and poverty may mean the de facto disenfranchisement of large sectors of the population. Equally, those interested in combating torture need to examine possible underlying socio-economic, cultural, and organizational reasons for the practice of torture, which themselves may rely on the variable protection of other human rights.15

Second, the human rights challenge to the "generations" characterization of rights suggests that there is a false dichot­omy between negative and positive rights16 that tends to privi­lege civil and political rights over economic and social rights, since the protection of the former appears less dependent on state resources than the latter,17 One response to this false di­chotomy is to claim that" all rights are positive"18 since the full

of all categories of human rights ultimately relies on relative fiscal capacity of states. In this view, the protection

of property rights requires a well-funded judiciary, police force, and fire service, as well as a well-developed infrastructure that can relay information, goods, and services in the event that prop­

is under threat in some way. A similar argument can be about guaranteeing the right to vote. Beyond prohibiting

14 Boyle, K. Stock-taking all Human Riglzts: The World Conference on Human . Vienna 1993, Political Studies, No. 43, 1995, pp. 79-95; Donnelly, J. "De­

mc,crclCV, Development, and Human Rights". Human Rights Quarterly, No. 21, 3, 1999, pp. 608-632.

15 See Huggins, M. K. et. al. Violence Workers: Police Torturers alld Murderers Reconstruct Brazilian Atrocities. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002.

16 Shue, H. Basic Rights: Subsistellce, Affluence and U.S Foreign Policy. ~rinc~­Princeton University Press, 1980; Donnelly, J. Ulllversal Human RIghts III

... , op. cit., pp. 30-33. 17 Foweraker, J. and T. Landman. Citizenship Rights ... , op. cit., pp. 14-17. 18 Holmes, S. and Sunstein, C. R. The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on

. New York, W.W. Norton, 1999.

116 REVlSTA· IBEROAMERICANA DE DERECHOS HUMANOS

intimidation and discrimination at the polls, running a free fair election requires a tremendous amount of financial technology, and infrastructure, the need for which has been lustrated dramatically by the highly contested process and suIt of the 2000 Presidential Election in the United States America (USA). And as above, the prevention of torture volves training and education within police and security which entails the need for significant financial resources the state.

Another response to the traditional division between posi. tive and negative human rights is to view them has having both positive and negative dimensions, the full delineation of which is essential for human rights measurement.19 By claiming that all rights are positive, we may lose sight of significant neg­ative characteristics of human rights. While it is clearly possible above to see how civil and political rights have positive charac­teristics (i.e. the provision of well-funded judiciaries, training and education programmes, and well-developed infrastructure), it is equally possible to see how economic and social rights have significant negative characteristics. For example, just like torture by the state is seen as preventable if only the state refrained from torturing, discrimination in public education and health­care is equally preventable if only the state refrained from so discriminating. In this way, it is equally possible to have a "vio_ lations approach"20 to studying the promotion and protection of economic, social, and cultural rights as it is to studying the pro­motion and protection of civil and political rights.

Table 1 shows how such a conceptualisation of human rights looks if we are to include their positive and negative di­mensions. The table is a 2 x 3 matrix resulting from three cate­gories of human rights, each with corresponding positive and negative dimensions. Positive dimensions include those proactive actions that states take to provide resources and poli­cies for improving the promotion and protection of human

19 Landman, T. "Measuring Human Rights ... , op. cit., pp. 922-923. 20 Chapman, A. "A "Violations Approach" for Monitoring the International

Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights". Human Rights Quarterly. No. 18, Vol. 1, 1996, pp. 23-66.

SCOPE OF HUMAN RIGHTS ' TODD LANDMAN 117

while negative dimensions are those actions that states or not do) that deliberately violate (or protect) h~llnan

( Certain cells in the matrix have been well covered m ~he and practice of human rights. Fo:' example, the negahv.e

of civil and political rights m Cell II are the tradl­focus of human rights international st~~dard.s (e.g. the

International Covenant on Civil and Pohhc~l RIghts), sy~­(e.g. United Nations, Europ~an, Inter-Amencan, and Afn­

nd mechanisms for reportmg and redress (e.g. Human a Committee, European Court of Human Rights; Inter­

Commission and Inter-American Court of Human monitoring, advocacy, and campaigns from human ~ghts

organisations (e.g. Amnesty Int:rnabonal Human Rights Watch); and much of the acad~mIc s.cholar-

political science.21 Equally, the positive dImenSIOns of social, and cultural rights in Cell III have been the focus of human rights international standards (e.g.

1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cul­tural Rights), mechanisms for reporting and r:dress (e.g. the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cu~tu~al ~ghts), no~-g~v­ernmental organisations working on SOCIal JustIc: and mmonty rights issues (e.g. Minority. Ri~hts G~oup International) and aca~ demic scholarship primanly m SOCIOlogy, developmental eco nomics, and anthropology.22 .

Outside these two areas of human rights that have receIved wide attention and debate, there have been varying degrees of attention paid to the positive and negative dimensio~~ of h~man rights depicted in the remaining cells. For the pOSItive d,~men­sions of civil and political rights in Cell I, the .work. on, good governance"23 has sought to examine. the ways m ~hIch mvest­ment in judiciaries, prisons, and police forces can Improve the

21 See Landman, T. "Review Article: the Political Science of Human

Rights ... , op. cit. " 5 . I N 27 22 Turner, B. S. "Outline of a Theory of Human Rights. OCIO ogJJ . . 0.. '

Vol. 3, 1993, pp. 489-512; Freeman, M. "Anthropology ~nd the Democratisation of Human Rights". The Intemational Journal of Human RIghts. No.6, Vol. 3,2002, pp 37-54 Freeman M. Human Rights ... , op. cit.

. 23 W' T ':Governance Good Governance and Global Governance: Conceptu::s:~d ~ctual challenies". Third World Quarterly. No. 21, Vol. 5,2000, pp. 795-814.

118 REVISTA IBEROAMERICANA DE DERECHOS HUMANOS

foundations of governance and so deliver better economic perity,24 while those interested in the administration of . see such positive aspects of civil and political rights as to addressing problems of the" (un)rule" of law, where the existence of domestic formal legal frameworks for the tection of human rights, rights protections themselves """J,W"'''" highly precarious owing to corruption, patrimonialism, weak stitutions, and differential treatment based on social class.25 the negative dimensions of economic, social, and cultural right in Cell IV, there has been much focus on general patterns S

gender, ethnic, racial, linguistic, and religious discrimination but perhaps less attention on how these practices may consti: tute violations to economic, social, and cultural rights.26 Since the debt crisis in the 1980s, there has been an increase in Social mobilization and attention (e.g. Charter 99 issued by the One World Trust) around the transnational issues of debt relief, de­velopmental assistance and distribution of global income, and "post-colonial" reparations for past practices made most vocally at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism (Cell V). Since the 1970s, groups have been mobilizing for transnational solutions to the global environmental problems and have focussed on the negative dimensions of "offending" states such as the United States of America (Cell VI), but there has been less of a focus on the rights issues associated with such solutions. Finally, from a

24 World Bank. Development and Good Governance. Washington, D.C., World Bank, 1992; Knack, S. and P. Keefer "Institutions and Economic Performance: Cross-Country Tests Using Alternative Institutional Measures". Economics alld ~olitics, No .. 7, 1995, pp. 207-2.17:, Clague, C. et al. "Property and Contract Rights In AutocracIes and DemocracIes. Journal of Economic Growth. No.1, Vol. 2, 1996, pp. 243-276; Clague, C. et al. "Democracy, Autocracy, and the Institutions Sup­portive of Economic Growth". In: Clague, C. (ed.) Institutions and Economic Deve­lopment: Growth and Governance in Less-Developed and Post-Socialist Countries. Balti­more and London, The John Hopkins University Press, 1997; USAID. Democracy and Governance: A Conceptual Framework. Washington, D.C., Center for Demo­cracy and Governance, Technical Publications Series, 1998, <http://www.usaid. gov/democracy/pubsindex.html>; USAID. Handbook of Democracy and Governance Progra'}l Indicat.ors .. Washington, D.C., Center for Democracy and Governance, Techrucal Publications Series, 1998.

25 E.g. Mende~, r E., .O'Do~mell, C?, and Pinheiro, P. S. The (Un) Rule of Law and the Underprtvlleged m Latm America. Notre Dame University Press, South Bend, eds, 1999.

26 Chapman, A. "A Violations Approach" ... , op. cit.

SCOPE OF HUMAN RIGHTS • TODD LANDMAN 119

rights perspective, the work on globalization and trade focussed on the "violation" represented by unfair trade agree­

hammered out in the World Trade Organisation,27 which seen to be disproportionately influenced by the United States America and the European Union,28 as well as unsavoury

and production techniques used by multina-

Table 1. Positive and negative dimensions of human rights categories29

Civil and political

Economic, social, and cultural

Solidarity

'Positive' 'Negative'

(i.e. provision of resour- (i.e. practices that deli­ces and outcomes of berately violate)

policies)

1. II.

Investment in judicia- Torture, extra-judicial ries, prisons, police for- killings, disappearance, ces, and elections arbitrary detention, un-

fair trials, electoral inti­midation, disenfranchisement

III. IV.

Progressive realisation Ethnic, racial, gender, or Investment in health, linguistic discrimination education, and welfare in health, education,

and welfare

V. VI.

Compensation for past Environmental wrongs degradation

Debt relief CO emissions

Overseas development Unfair trade and technical assistance

27 E.g. Compa, L. and S. Diamond. Human Righ~s, Labour Rights, an~ I1:ter­national Trade. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvarua Press, 1996; FranclOru, F. The Environment, International Trade and Human Rights. Hart Publishing, 200l.

28 Steinberg, R. et al. The Evolution of the Trade Regime: Economics, Law, and Politics of the GATT/WTO. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2005.

29 Landman, T., Studying Human Rights ... , op. cit., p. 11. Reprinted with permission from Routledge©. All rights reserved.

120 REVISTA IBEROAMERICANA DE DERECHOS nL'M'I"K-.

III. FROM CONCEPTS TO INDICATORS

The various examples outlined in the previous section how human rights measurement can benefit from such a ceptual delineation, since it disaggregates the concept of rights into different categories across different dimensions facilitates the process of operationalizing human rights for tematic analysis and shows that such an operationalization essarily means that there will be multiple indicators for the human rights. As the next section will show, the different . sions and categories of human rights provide the content developing "events-based", "standards-basedl/, "survey and other measures of human rights. But what are the tional steps that constitute the move from these conceptual tinctions of human rights to the provision of valid, and reliable measures? At an abstract methodological level, process of measurement converts well-defined and fied concepts into meaningful quantitative measures or qualita" tive categories, which involves four major steps, or levelS.3D The first level concerns the background concept that is to be measured (i.e. human rights), which is the broad constellation of mean­ings and understandings associated with the concept. The scope of human rights outlined above summarises what comprises such a broad constellation of meanings and understandings in the field of human rights that has emerged from theory, history and the international legal framework that has evolved since the 1948 Universal Declaration. The second level develops the systemised concept, which specifies further the concept that is to be measured, such as a specific right (e.g. the right not to be tortured), a group of rights (e.g. civil rights), or different com­ponents of the same right. The third level operationalizes the sys­tematised concept into meaningful, valid, and reliable indica­tors, such as events-based, standards-based, survey-based, or other measures (see next section). The final level provides scores on indicators for the units of analysis being used (e.g. individu-

3D Adcock, Rand D. Collier. "Measurement Validity: A Shared Standard for Qualitative and Quantitative Research". American Political Science Review. No. 95, Vol. 3,2001, pp. 529-546; also Zeller, R, and E. Carmines. Measurenlent in the Social Sciences: The Link Between Theon) and Data. London, Cambridge Univer­sity Press, 1980.

OF HUMAN RIGHTS· TODD LANDMAN 121

countries, regions, etc.). Figure 1 depicts these four graphically.

FIGURE 1. LEVELS OF MEASUREMENT31

Levell Background Concept

. . t d The broad constellation of meanings and undestandmgs aSSOCia e with a given concept

Normative alld empirical tlleory

Level 2 Sistematized Concept

A specific formulation of a concept used by scholar, lGO, NGO Dimensions alld cOlllponmts of concept

Level 3 Indicators

AI referred to as 'measures', 'operationalisations', and classifications so Events-based, standards-based (ordinal, inter~al, IlOmlllal),

survey-based (ordinal, interval, IWIIlI/Wl)

Level 4 Scores for Units

The scores for units of observation (e.g. indi:id~als, countries, regions) generated by a particular mdlcator.

Quantitative and data.

Consider a concrete example. The backgr?und concept to be measured is human rights, the scope of WhICh has ~een ~y~-

ti 11 outlined above across its different categones (CIvIl, tema ca y d lid . t ) and dim en-political, economic, social, cultural, an so an y . sions (positive and negative). The international commumty ?f human rights scholars and practitioners have sp~nt the years In

the lead up to and the years since the 1948 U~IVers~1 Declara­tion "constructingl/32 and "justifyingl/33 human nghts In conc~p­

tual and legal terms. While there have not been agreed phIlo-

31 Landman, T., Studying Human RIg ts ... , op. CI., . . . h 't p 77 Reprinted with ennission from Routledge©. All rights reserved. . 0 cit

P 32 Donnelly, J. "Democracy, Development, and Hu~an Rights ... : p. . 33 Sorell, T. and T. Landman. "Justifying Human Rights ... , op. Clt.

122 REVISTA IBEROAMERICANA DE DERECHOS HUMANOS • 2

sophical foundations for the existence of human rights,34 the ex, tant international law of human rights provides a general Con_ sensus on the core content of those human rights that ought to be protected.35 Efforts at measurement start from the basic as­sumption that human rights protection varies from one COUn_ try to the next and that such variance can be captured through the development of different indicators.36 The incremental de­velopment of the core content of rights comprises Steps 1 and 2 in the levels of measurement since the general background con­cept has been systematised through normative developments. To date, there is arguably greater consensus on the core content of civil and political rights than other categories of human rights, but such an incomplete consensus should not preclude attempts to measure all categories of rights. Indeed, an essence of devel­oping human rights measures (or any social scientific measure) requires a movement up and down the four levels of mea­surement as greater consensus is achieved across different un­derstandings of rights.

The matrix representing the intersection between the cate­gories and dimensions of human rights in Table 1 is a system­atic way of organising the first step to measurement. Consider the right not to be tortured, which is a systematised concept of human rights that has been identified most notably in the Uni­versal Declaration, the International Covenant on Civil and Po­litical Rights (ICCPR), and the Convention Against Torture (CAT). The systematised concept is susceptible to operationalization at Level 3. But given the two dimensions of human rights, the right not to be tortured can be measured at Level 3 both pos­itively (i.e. resources a state is investing in procedures, policies, reforms, and training for the prevention of torture) and nega­tively (formal commitment to international standards on torture and actual incidence of torture). At Level 4, the right not to be tortured is measured for a unit (e.g. Brazil) at a particular time

34 Mendus, S. "'Human Rights in Political Theory". Political Studies. Special Issue 43, 1995, pp. 10-24; Landman, T. "Measuring Human Rights ... , op. cit; Landman, T. Review Article: the Political ... , op. cit.

35 Landman, T and J. Hiiusermann. "Map-Making and Analysis of the Main International Initiatives on Developing Indicators on Democracy and Good Governance". Report to the European Commission. 2003.

36 See Landman, T. Review Article: The PoliticaL .. , op. cit., p. 555.

SCOPE OF HUMAN RIGHTS • TODD LANDMAN 123

1985), across its positive dimension (e.g. % GDP s~e~1t on tor­reform, number of police in receipt of torture trammg, c.ase.s

of reprimand for torture) and its negative din:ension (e.g. mCI­of torture revealed through events counting, a scale of tor-

or survey estimations on popular experiences of torture). ture, I' d'

this way, the right not to be tortured may have se.vera ~n 1-

that measure its core content across its two dImensIOns.

IV. EXTANT MEASURES

In many ways, the proliferation of hu~an right~ no~ms and the promulgation of international human nghts treaties smce the Universal Declaration have effectively begun the move from background concepts (Levell) to systematised concepts (Level 2), and the move from providing indicators (Level 3) to scores on units (Level 4) comprises the continuing work of scholars an~ practitioners working on human rights measurement. There IS thus neither a complete agreement on the core content of all hu­man rights nor a full set of indica~ors avail~ble t~at measures them across their different categones and dImensIOns. Ra.ther, available measures cover certain categories of human nghts across one or another of their dimensions. Extant approach~s have measured human rights in principle (Le. as they are laid out in national and international legal documents), in practice (Le. as they are enjoyed by individuals an~ groups.in nation states), and as government policy that has a drrect. beanng on hu­man rights protection. Measurement of human ~Ights has ~aken the form of coding country participation in regIOnal and mter­national human rights regimes, coding national con~titutior:s ac­cording to their rights provisions, qualitati~e reportm~ .af nghts violations, survey data on perceptions of nghts condItions and experiences, quantitative summaries of rights .violations, abstract scales of rights protection based on normative standards, an~ individual and aggregate measures that map government poli­cies that have consequences for the enjoyment of rights.

4.1. Rights in Principle

International and domestic law enshrines norms and princi­ples of human rights, which can be coded using protocols that

124 REVISTA lJlEROAMERICANA DE DERECHOS HUMANOS • 2

reward a country for having certain rights provisions in plac the domestic level and for having made such rights com e ~t

t h · . nut-me~ s at t e mte~natIonall~vel through the ratification of inter_ natIOnal human nghts treatIes. Such a coding represents a ne t · d' . f' ga-Ive ImenSIOn 0 state practIce towards human rights si

ki " nce ma ng constItutIOnal provisions at the domestic level and si ing and r~tifying t~eaties at the international level carries witE; only nommal cost m terms of actual fiscal capacity of the stat It is therefore a formal commitment in principle that can ~s. counted. In an important precedent for measuring rights . e .. I h In prmcip e at t e domestic level, van Maarseveen and van der

Tang (1978) coded constitutions for 157 countries across a multi­tude of institutions and rights for the period 1788-1975. Their study compares the degree to which national constitutions con­tai~ ~hose ri?hts mentioned in the Universal Declaration by ex­ammmg theIr frequency distributions across different historical ep~c~s b~fore and after 1948. While their study is broadly de­scnptIve m natur.e, their data allow for global patterns and pro­cesses of change m the formal protection of rights at the domes­tic level to be mapped, while secondary and more advanced statistical analysis could be conducted on the patterns within the data while exploring possible relationships with other indi­cators. In follOWing this precedent, Foweraker and Landman37 u.se an "~nstitutional. procedural index" to code rights in prin­CIple usmg the vanous national constitutions, constitutional ~~end~ent~, a~d executive decree laws during the years of po­htIcal liberahzatIon and democratic transition in Brazil Chile Mexico, and Spain. In similar fashion, Keith38 codes ~ationai constitutions and their exceptional clauses to measure the abil­ity of countries to suspend rights protection during states of emergency.

Coding rights in principle is important since it translates qualitative legal information into quantitative information that can be used to track the fonnal commibnent of countries to rights

37 Foweraker, J. and T. Landman. Citizenship Rights ... , op. cit., pp. 51-52. . 38 K.eith, 1. C. "National Constitutions and Human Rights Protection: Re­

gIonal Dlf~erences and. Colo~ial !nfluences". In: Carey, S. and S. Poe (eds.) Understandmg Human Rights VIOlatIOns: New Systematic Studies. Aldershot, Ashga­te, 2004, pp. 162-185.

Tf{E SCOPE OF HUMAN RIGHTS ' TODD LANDMAN 125

protection against which their actual practices can be compared. Thus, Foweraker and Landman39 use regression techniques to gauge the relative" gap" between rights in principle and rights in practice in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Spain.40 Their analysis demonstrates that during the process of political liberalization, authoritarian states can deny rights that they proclaim are pro­tected (a negative gap), protect rights they proclaim are protected (a zero gap), or protect rights that they proclaim are not pro­tected (a positive gap). Keith41 uses the state of emergency vari­able to examine the relationship between rights in principle and rights in practice, while controlling for the independent effects of democracy, wealth, warfare, and other variables.

This development of coding schemes at the domestic level has been replicated at the international level by scoring countries for signing and ratifying major regional and international hu­man rights instruments.42 Rather than code individual rights provisions, the coding schemes measure the degree to which countries are parties to human rights treaties over time. Keith,43 Hathaway44 and Neumayer45 use simple dichotomous measures of ratification (0, 1), and Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui46 count the number of treaties that countries have ratified and the time

39 Foweraker, J. and T. Landman. Citizenship Rights ... , op. cit., pp. 62-65. 40 Duvall, R., and M. Shamir. "Indicators from Errors: Cross-National, Time

Serial Measures of the Repressive Disposition of Government". Taylor, C. 1. (ed.) Indicator Systems for Political, Ecollomic, and Social Analysis. Cambridge, MA, Oelgeschlager, Gunn and Hain, Publishers, Inc., 1980, pp. 162-163; Arat, Z. F. Democracy and Human Rights in Developing Coulltries. Boulder and London, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991.

41 Keith, 1. C. "National Constitutions and ... , op. cit. 42 Keith, 1. C. "The United Nations International Covenant on Civil and

Political Rights: Does it Make a Difference in Human Rights Behavior?". Journal of Peace Research. VoL 36, No.1, 1999, pp. 95-118; Landman, T. Protecting Human Rights ... , op. cit; and Hathaway, O. "Do Treaties Make a Difference? Human Rights Treaties and the Problem of Compliance". Yale Law Journal, No. 111,2002, pp. 1932-2042; Neumayer, E. "Do International Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights?". Journal of Conflict Resolution. VoL 49, No.6, 2005, pp. 1-29; Hafner-Burton, E. and K. Tsutsui "Human Rights in a Globalizing World: The Paradox of Empty Promises". American Journal of Sociology. VoL 110, No.5, 2005, pp. 1373-1411.

43 Keith, 1. C. "The United Nations ... , op. cit. 44 Hathaway, O. "Do Treaties Make a Difference? ... , op. cit. 45 Neumayer, E. "Do International Human ... , op. cit. 46 Hafner-Burton, E. and Tsutsui, K. "Human Rights in .... , op. cit.

126 REYISTA IBEROAMERICANA DE DERECHOS HUMANOS • 2,

since ratification. Landman47 combines a three-point coding scheme for treaty ratification (0, 1, 2) with a four-point cod­ing scheme that rewards and punishes countries for the degree to which they make reservations upon ratification, where a 4 denotes a country that ratifies with no reservations and a 1 de­notes a country that has made significant reservations that un­dermines the object and purpose of the treaty. Combining the ratification variable with the reservation variable produces a weighted ratification variable that ranges from 0 to 8. Across these measurement efforts, higher scores for countries denote a greater formal commitment to protect rights.

The time-series analysis of regime participation shows an expansion in the number of countries that are now formally participating in the international regime; that "late ratifiers" tend to ratify more treaties with fewer reservations than "early ratifiers"; and that democracies have a greater propensity to rat­ify treaties, even though 'old' democracies (i.e. those countries that were democratic before the 1970s) ratify fewer treaties with more reservations than new democracies.48 These measures of treaty ratification are also used in global analysis to show that regimes frequently make formal commitments to human rights treaties, but continue to violate human rights. This difference is captured by weak positive or even negative correlation and re­gression co-efficients between ratification and rights variables.49

Moreover, Landman's50 analysis shows that the significant rela­tionship between treaty ratification and rights protection weak­ens when taking reservations into account. Carrying out such analyses, however, requires measurement of rights in practice to which the discussion now turns.

4.2. Rights In Practice

Rights in practice are those rights actually enjoyed and ex­ercised by groups and individuals regardless of the formal com-

47 Landman, T. Protecting Human Rights ... , op. cit. 48 Landman, T. Protecting Human Rights ... , op. cit., pp. 59-96. 49 Keith, L.c. "The United Nations International Covenant ... , op. cit;

Hathaway, O. "Do Treaties Make a Difference? ... , op. cit.; see also Krasner, S.D. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1999, pp.122.

50 Landman, T. Protecting Human Rights ... , op. cit.

THE SCOPE OF HUMAN RIGHTS • TODD LANDMAN 127

mitment made by a government. While there ought to be a cor­respondence between formal rights commitments found in national constitutions and international human rights instruments and those enjoyed on the ground, it is often the case that indi­viduals and groups do not enjoy the full protection of their rights (a negative gap in the terminology used above). Ideally, there ought to be in place a legal appeals procedure, mechanisms for seeking domestic and international remedies, and a subse­quent "correction" in national practices to uphold the rights to which regimes have made formal commitments. In the absence of such systems or in the face of weak systems, the role of many human rights practitioners is to provide meaningful and accurate information on the degree to which human rights are being violated. Indeed, greater concerns over humans rights since World War II has led to an explosion in the number of domestic and international human rights NGOs collecting infor­mation on violations. Such NGOs have been given greater status in international governmental organizations, and their activities include setting standards, providing information, lobbying, and giving direct assistance to those suffering abuse of their rights.51

The increase in the salience of human rights as an issue combined with organizations dedicated to documenting human rights violations means that there is greater availability of com­prehensive information on actual practices of states and the conditions under which individuals live. But this information is necessarily lumpy and incomplete, since reporting of human rights violations is fraught with difficulties, including fear within and amongst victims, power of the offenders, compre­hensive evidence, and the quality of communications technol­ogy, among others. In recognising this problem, Bollen52 argues that there are six levels of information on human rights viola-

51 Forsythe, D.P. Human Rights ... , op. cit., pp. 163-190; Welch, C.E. Jr. NGOs and Human Rights: Promise and Performance. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press. 2001, pp. 1-6; Landman, T. and M. Abraham. Evaluation and Assessment of Nine Human Rights NGOs. Hague, Ministry of Foreign Mfairs of the Netherlands, 2004.

52 Bollen, K.A. "Political Rights and Political Liberties in Nations: An Eva­luation of Rights Measures, 1950 to 1984." In: Jabine, T.B. and R.P. Claude, (eds.) Human Rights and Statistics: Getting the Record Straight. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992, pp. 198.

128 REVISTA IBEROAMERICANA DE DERECHOS HUMANOS • 2

tions: (1) an ideal level with all characteristics of all violations (ei­ther reported or unreported), followed by (2) recorded viola_ tions, (3) known and accessible violations, (4) locally reported violations (nation-state), (5) internationally reported violations and (6) the most biased coverage of violations, which may in~ clude only those reported in USA sources.

Work in this area seeks to obtain lower levels of informa_ tion in much greater detail. For example, the Torture Reporting Handbook53 and Reporting Killings as Human Rights Violations54 are manuals that define specific rights, outline the legal protections against their violation, and provide ways in which testimony and evidence from victims can be collected. The Human Rights Information and Documentation System (HURIDOCS), founded in 1982, provides standards for human rights violations report­ing, and now represents a vast network of human rights groupS.55 While such increased infdrmation at all levels is help­ful for systematic human rights research, there remains a trade-off or tension between micro levels of information gather­ing and the ability to make systematic comparative inferences about human rights. In order for equivalent measures to "travel" for comparative analysis, there will necessarily be some loss of information, while the comparability of measures allows stronger generalizations about human rights violations to be drawn.

These issues about levels of information and the commensurability for cross-national analysis delineate the three types of data available for measuring human rights in practice: (1) events-based, (2) standards-based, and (3) survey-based. Events-based data chart the reported acts of violation commit­ted against groups and individuals. Events-based -data answer the important questions of what happened, when it happened, and who was involved, and then report descriptive and numer­ical summaries of the events. Counting such events and viola-

53 Giffard, C. Torture Reporting Handbook. Colchester, UK. Human Rights Centre, University of Essex, 2002.

54 Thompson, K. and C. Giffard. Reporting Killings as Human Rights Viola­tions. Colchester, UK. Human Rights Centre, University of Essex, 2002.

55 Dueck, J. "HURIDOCS Standard Formats as a Tool in the Documentation of Human Rights Violations". In: Jabine, T.B. and R.P. Claude. Human Rights and Statistics ... , op. cit., pp. 127.

THE SCOPE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 0 TODD LANDMAN 129

tions involves identifying the various acts of commission and omission that constitute or lead to human rights violations, such as extra-judicial killings, arbitrary arrest or torture. Such data tend to be disaggregated to the level of the violation itself, which may have related data units such as the perpetrator, the victim, and the witness.56 Standards-based data establish how often and to what degree violations occur, and then translate such judgements into quantitative scales that are designed to achieve commensurability. Such measures are thus one level re­moved from event counting and violation reporting, and merely apply an ordinal scale to qualitative information. Finally, sur­vey-based data use random samples of country populations to ask a series of standard questions on the perception of rights protection. Such measures track individual level perceptions of rights violations and may even capture direct or indirect indi­vidual experiences of rights violations, particularly in countries that have suffered from prolonged periods of civil conflict, au­thoritarian rule, or foreign occupation.

There are by now many examples of each of these kinds of data that measure the negative dimensions of human rights. Events-based data analysis has a long tradition, where one of the first applications of statistics to the study of violence ana­lysed the distribution of more than 15,000 "quasi-judicial" exe­cutions carried out during the height of the Reign of Terror (March 1793 to August 1794) after the French Revolution. Using the archived documents of the tribunals that sentenced people to death, Greer57 analyses the patterns of sentencing and execu­tions over time, space, and by social class (nobles, upper middle class, lower middle class, clergy, working class, and peasants). His analysis shows that the peasants and working classes suf­fered the largest number of executions, where the majority of the executions (52%) took place in the West, followed by the Southeast (19%) and Paris (16%). In this analysis, the individual victim serves as the basic unit of analysis, which allows for sec­ondary analysis further testing of hypotheses about the causes

56 Ball, P., et al. Making the Case: Investigating Large Scale Human Rights Vio­lations Using Information Systems and Data Analysis. Washington, D.C., American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2000.

57 Greer. The Incidence of Terror During the French Revolution: A Statistical In­terpretation. Gloucester, MA, Peter Smith Publishers.

130 REVISTA IBEROAMERICANA DE DERECHOS HUMANOS • 2.

of violations, such as those based on class, political, econ0ltri and/or religious variables. 58 c,

Ball and Asher59 conducted a similar style of statistical anal_ ysis on the patterns of killings and refugee migration of Alb _ nians in Kosovo between 24 March and 22 June 1999. The ana~_ ysis tests whether the violence and migration during this period were d~e to the activities of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the NATO atr attacks, or a systematic campaign by Yugoslav forces Using detailed border records of the refugee population that left Kosovo combined with UNHCR refugee data and four sources (American Bar Association, ICTY exhumation data, Hu­man Rights Watch, and the OSCE) of data on the killings that took place during the period, allowed the refugee migration and killings to be plotted over time. The more advanced statisti­cal analysis of these patterns controlled for region, KLA activi­ties, and NATO bombing, and determined that neither the KLA nor NATO could be held responsible for the killings, while KLA activities were associated with increased refugee flows in the Northern and Eastern regions of Kosovo. 60 In the ab­s~nce of det~iled data on Yugoslav troop movements, the analy­stS could netther support nor reject the hypothesis that those forces were responsible for the migration and killings. However, it was able to reject the two hypotheses about the KLA and ~~TO; a finding when presented to the ICTY undermined sig­nificantly any attempt by the defence team to shift blame away from the Yugoslav forces. 61

This discussion of events-based data illustrates that highly disaggregated data from particular historical contexts provides an important means for explaining what happened and how, as well as ruling out rival explanations (i.e. how such events could not have happened). Events-based analysis has been used to chart the progression of the Rwanda genocide,62 to estimate ci­vilian mortality rates before and after the invasion of Iraq in

58 Greer. The Incidence of Terror During the French Revolution ... , op. cit., p. 4. 59 Ball, P. B. et al. "How many Peruvians have died? American Association

for the Advancement of Science (MAS). Washington, D.C., 2003, <http://shr.aaas. orglhrdaglperu/aaas _peru _5.pdf>.

60 Ibid., p. 22. 61 Ball, P. B. et al. "How many Peruvians have died ... , op. cit., pp. 24. 62 See <http://www.genodynamics.com>.

SCOPE OF HUMAN RIGHTS • TODD LANDMAN 131

2003,63 and to estimate the total number of civilian deaths as result of the war in Iraq.64 It has also b~co.me a .central

of many truth commissions, such that lllmted tllne-se­. s events data have been collected most notably in Argentina,

fIe Af . S' L Chile, Guatemala, EI Salvador, Haiti, South nca, terra eone,

and East Timor.65 In contrast to events-based data, standards-based scales pro-

vide much more aggregated forms of information that h~ve been collected and coded across a large number of countnes. The most dominant examples of extant standards-base~ .scales of human rights include the Freedom House scales of ctvIl and political liberties;66 the "political t~rror scal~" ,67 a scale of tor­ture,68 and a series of seventeen dtfferent nghts measures col­lected by Cingranelli and Richar~s:69 Freed~~ H~use has a standard checklist it uses to code ctvIl and pohttcal ngh~s based on press reports and country sources about state pra~ttces and then derives two separate scales for each category ~f n~hts on a scale that ranges from 1 (full protection) to 7 (f~n vIOlatton). T~e political terror scale ranges from 1 (full protectto~). to 5. (full. VIO­lation) for state practice that include torture, pohttcal l1~pnson­ment, unlawful killing, and disappearance. InformatIOn for these scales comes from the USA State Department and Amnesty International country reports. In similar fashion, Hathaway70

63 Roberts, 1. et al. "Mortality before and after the 2003 ~vasion of Iraq: Cluster Sample Survey". The Lancet. Odober 29, 2004. <http://lmage.thelancet.

com!extras/04artl0342web.pdf> . 64 See <http://www.iraqbodycount.net>. 65 See Landman. Studying Human Rights ... , op. cit., pp. :07-125. . 66 See <http://www.freedomhouse.org>.Ga~til. R.. D .. The Com'parativ~

Survey of Freedom: Experiences and Suggestions . StudieS m Comparatlve Inter national Development. No. 25, 1990, pp. 25-50.

67 Mitchell, C. et al., "State Terrorism: Issues of Concept ~nd Measure­ment". In M. Stohl and G. Lopez, Government Violence and RepreSSIOn: A~ Agenda for Research. New York, Greenwood Press, 1986; Poe, S. and C.N. Tate. Repr.e~: sion of Human Rights to Personal Integrity in the 1980s: A. Global AnalysIs. American Political Science Review. No. 88, 1994, pp. 853-872; GIbney, M. and M. Stohl "Human Rights and US Refugee Policy". In M. Gibney (Ed.), Open Bor­ders?'Closed Societies?: The Ethical and Political Issues. Westport, WT, Greenwood

Press, 1998. . 68 Hathaway, O. "Do Treaties Make a Difference ... , op. CIt.

69 See <http://www.humanrightsdata.com>. . 70 Hathaway, O. "Do Treaties Make a Difference ... , op. CIt.

132 REVISTA IIlEROAMERICANA DE DERECHOS HUMANOS • 2

measures torture on a 1 to 5 scale using information from the USA State Department. The Cingranelli and Richards human rights data code similar sets of rights on scales from 0 to 2, and o to 3, with some combined indices ranging from 0 to 8, Where higher scores denote better rights protections. In addition to a series of civil and political rights, Cingranelli and Richards also provide measures for such rights as women's economic, social and political rights, worker rights, and religious rights. '

Survey data have been less used in social scientific research on human rights than either events-based or standards-based measures. They have usually featured more often in research on the support for democracy,71 trust and social capital,72 pat­terns of corruption/3 or as components of larger indices of "post-material" values.74 But increasingly, household surveys have been used to provide measures for popular attitudes about rights and to uncover direct and indirect experiences of human rights violations. Some of the most notable work has been car­ried out by the NCO Physicians for Human Rights, who con­duct surveys of "at risk" popUlations (e.g. internally displaced people or women in conflict) to determine the nature and de­gree of human rights violations. One of their surveys measured war-related sexual violence in Sierra Leone based surveys con­ducted on 991 women.75

While these examples of human rights measures focus on civil and political rights, the first section of this article argued that it is possible to extend the methodological discussion to in-

71 E.g. Kaase, M. and K. Newton, Beliefs in Government, Vol. V, Beliefs. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995.

72 E.g. Whiteley, P. "The Origins of Social Capital". In: Jan Van Deth Maraffi et al. Social Capital and Europea11 Democracy. London, Routledge, 1999: pp. 25-44; Whiteley, P. "Economic Growth and Social Capital". Political Studies, No. 48,2000, pp. 443-466.

73 See <http://www.transparency.com>. 74 See Inglehart, R. Modernization and Postmodernization. Princeton N Prin-

ceton University Press, 1997. ' ,

75 Physicians for H~man Rights. "A Survey of Human Rights Abuses Among New Internally DIsplaced Persons Herat, Afghanistan". A Briefing Paper. Boston. MA and Was~ington, D.C., Physicians for Human Rights, 2002, pp. 47-48; AmOWltz, L. L. et al. Prevalence of War-Related Sexual Violence and Other Hu­man Rights Abuses Among Internally Displaced Persons in Sierra Leone". Journal of the American Medical Association. January 23/30, Vol. 287, No.4, 2000, pp. 513-521.

'fflE SCOPE OF HUMAN RlGHTS ' TODD LANDMAN 133

clude these kinds of measurement for economic, sociat and cul­tural rights, as Cingranelli and Richards have begun to do. In­deed, if the denial of economic, social, and cultural rights is the product of particular government practices, then it is see~s equally possible to use qualitative information to summanze such practices into ordinal and interval scales like those used for civil and political rights violations. Overt, institutionalised, or implicit discrimination against individuals or groups that prevents their access to education or adequate health ca:e c~n­stitutes a practice that violates a right. In theory, such a VIOlation can be reported and coded using events-based, standards-based, and/or survey-based data. Cingranelli and Richards are coding practices that violate women's rights using an ordinal sc~le,

while the minorities at risk project codes the degree to whIch 224 different minority and communal groups experience dis­crimination also using an ordinal scale.76 These important prece­dents demonstrate how the negative dimensions of economic, social, and cultural rights can be measured.

Despite their development and increasingly wider use, these three types of data are fraught with methodological prob­lems. Events-based data are prone to either under-reporting of events that did occur or over-reporting of events that did not occur, creating problems of selection bias and misrepresentative data. It is impossible to document every last human rights vio­lation and those organisations collecting such information tend to concentrate on conflict-stricken societies during discrete peri­ods of time and thus cross-country comparisons using such measures is problematic. Sophisticated statistical techniques have been developed to overcome some of the limitations asso­ciated with estimation of violations, but extant data projects of this nature necessarily concentrate on limited time periods in particular cases, and it may be that some episodes of violence are simply too complex to analyse using these techniques. In contrast, standards-base data establish comparability by raising

76 Gurr, T. "Why minorities rebel: a cross national analysis of communal mobilization and conflict since 1945". International Political Science Review. Vol. 14, No.2, 1993, pp. 161-201; and also Foweraker, J. and R. Krznaric. "Measuring Liberal Democratic Performance: A Conceptual and Empirical Critique". Political Studies. Vol. 45, No.3, 2001, pp. 759-787.

134 REVISTA lBEROAMERICANA DE DERECHOS HUMANOS •

the level of abstraction, but have a tendency to truncate th variation of human rights protection across different cOuntrie e In other wor~s, their ~se of a simple limited scale may grOU~ together certam countnes that actually show a great differenc in their protection of human rights. While these scales present e general picture of the human rights situation and are useful fo~ drawing comparative inferences, they necessarily sacrifice the kind of specificity for pursuing direct legal action against perpe_ trators. Finally, survey data, especially those used across differ_ ent political contexts are prone to cultural biases, where the meaning of standardised questions on rights protection are dif­ferently understood in different countries. In this way, the de­bate about the universality of human rights affects the method of measuring rights through surveys, since it is not obvious that human rights are understood to mean the same thing across the world.

4.3. Government Policies and Outcomes

In addition to rights in principle and rights in practice, it is possible to provide more indirect measures of human rights us­ing aggregate statistics on the outcomes of government policies. Parr77 makes the useful distinction between human rights con­duct and developmental outcomes that may have a bearing on human rights. She stresses the fact that certain dimensions of conduct and outcomes are simply not prone to quantifiable measuremenU8 Her distinction fits well with the difference be­tween rights in practice (conduct) and government policy (out­comes), but such practices and outcomes are more readily quan­tifiable than Parr79 assumes. Traditionally, development studies and development economics have often relied on quantitative indicators of the outcomes of government policies, including gross domestic product, gross domestic product per capita, in-

77 Parr, S. F. "Indicators of Human Rights and Human Development: C?verI~ps a~d ~ifferences". In.: Radstaake, M. and D. Bronkhurst, Matching Prac­tice with Prmclples, Human Rights Impact Assessment: EU Opportunities. Utrecht, NL, Humanist Committee on Human Rights (HOM), 2002, pp. 31-32.

78 Radstaake, M. and D. Bronkhurst. Matching Practice with ... , op. cit., pp.31-32.

79 Parr, S. F. Indicators of Human ... , op. cit., pp. 31-32.

SCOPE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 0 TODD LANDMAN 135

inequality, expenditure on health, education, and welfare, among many others.30 Indeed, the UNDP's human development index (HDI) combines per capita income (standard of living)

literacy rates (knowledge), and life expectancy at birth ).31 While not providing a direct measure of rights

protection per se, such measures can elucidate the degree to which governments support activities that have an impact on human rights.

One solution is to employ development indicators as proxy measures for the progressive realisation of economic, social and cultural rights. Article 2 of the International Covenant on Eco­nomic, Social and Cultural Rights requires states to take steps, to the maximum of their available resources, towards the pro­gressive realisation of these rights; steps in which states set goals, targets and timeframes for national plans to implement these rights. Development indicators are thus seen as suitable proxy measures to capture the degree to which states are imple­menting these obligations and achieving the goals that have been agreed with United Nations treaty bodies. For example, literacy rates and gender breakdown of educational attainment are seen as proxy measures of the right to education; daily per capita supply of calories and other nutritional rates are seen as proxy measures of the right to food; and under-five mortality rates and the numbers of doctors per capita are seen as proxy measures of the right to health.82 Similar such mea­sures can be used as indicators for the right to adequate food and housing.

To date, such development indicators have primarily been applied to economic and social rights, but aggregate statistics can equally be used to measure the positive dimensions of civil and political rights. Following the work of the United States Agency for International Development,83 new efforts propose

80 E.g. See <http://www.worldbank.org>. 81 United Nations Development Programme. Human Development Report

1999, New York, Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 127-137. 82 United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Draft Guidelines: Human Rights Approach to Poverhj Reduction Strategies. Geneva, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2002.

83 USAID. Democracy and Governance ... , op. cit.; USAID. Handbook of Demo­cracy ... , op. cit.

136 REVISTA IBEROAMERICANA DE DERECHOS HUMANOS • 2

the use of development indicators as potential proxy measure for civil and political rights (e.g. investment in prison and pOlic: reform, the processing of cases, the funding of judiciaries, th ~rovision of legal aid and advice to suspects, the amount o~ time suspects spend on remand, and the proportion of cases taken up ~y indepen~en~ reporting and investigating bodies). The extensIOn of such 111dlcators for measuring cultural rights is also possible. The social and spatial mobility of ethnic and cul­tural minority populations, as well as spending on bi-lingual education can approximate the degree to which countries adopting policies to upholding their cultural rights obligations. In short, aggregate measures of provision and outcomes can de­fict the degre~ to which governments are committed to putting 111 place the kinds of resources needed to have a "rights-protec_ tive regime".84

V. LACUNAE AND CONCLUSIONS

This article illustrates the links between human rights con­cepts and human rights indicators. It shows that the back­ground concept of human rights is being systematised by the international legal and human rights community such that there is now a better known core content of human rights sus­ceptible to social scientific operationalisation using a variety of indicators across their different categories and dimensions. These include the positive and negative dimensions of civil, po­litical, economic, social, cultural, and solidarity rights. Efforts to operationalise these different dimensions and categories of human rights have included measures of rights in principle, rights in practice, and proxy measures of government policies and outcomes. To date, most efforts have concentrated on measuring rights in practice and include events-based, stan­dards-based, and survey-based forms of measurement.

It seems clear, however, that know more is known about what to measure conceptually and legally than how to measure it. Tremendous progress in human rights measurement has been achieved but there are serious and significant lacunae in

84 Donnelly, J. "Democracy, Development. .. , op. cit.

THE SCOPE OF HUMAN RIGHTS • TODD LANDMAN 137

the field that need to be addressed that include both the con­tent of rights that remain unmeasured and an over-reliance on certain forms of measurement. First, efforts in measurement have predominantly concentrated on the negative dimensions of civil, political rights and some cultural rights (i.e. minority rights discrimination) and the positive dimensions of economic and social rights. There is thus a dearth of measures for the positive dimensions of civil and political rights and the negative dimensions of economic and social rights. In the terms laid out in this article, there is a need to measure the provision of re­sources that support the protection of civil and political rights and the need to measure the violation of economic and social rights. Second, there is less agreement on the content of solidar­ity rights and at best there have been some proxy measures of­fered for them, such as the distribution of global income and trade dependency.

Third, there has been an over-reliance on standards-based ordinal measures of human rights with an emphasis on aggre­gation into single indices. Such measures maintain a reasonably high level of abstraction suitable for large cross-national com­parisons, but have problems of validity, reliability, and variance truncation. Such measures need to be improved by greater at­tention to primary sources in an effort to increase their validity, and greater disaggregation into separate measures of particular human rights. If standards-based ordinal scales are to be used and greater use is made of primary source material then such measures should provide more gradation in their ordinal cate­gories in order to reduce the worst forms of variance trunca­tion. It seems paramount, however, that such an effort needs to be complemented by other forms of data, including events-based, survey-based, and indicators of government poli­cies and outcomes.

A fascinating example of such a corr:bined measurement strategy has been achieved by the Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation in East Timor (CAVR), which has been documenting human rights abuses carried out during the Indo­nesian occupation between 25 April 1974 and 25 October 1999. The CAVR has collected three forms of data: (1) individual testi­monies that are coded using the "who did what to whom" data model outlined above, (2) a graveyard census of all names of all

138 REVISTA IBEROAMERICANA DE DERECHOS HUMANOS • Z

individuals who died during the period of occupation, and (3) a household mortality survey. The CA VR has then matched the information by name while maintaining the violation as the ba­sic unit of analysis and are making projections about the total number of people killed during the occupation using "multiple systems estimation" techniques used in Guatemala and Peru.8S While such efforts concentrate on single countries that have un­dergone periods in which egregious human rights abuses have been committed (a form of selection bias), the lessons from their experiences in combining different forms of human rights data from different primary sources inform our larger quest for im­proving and making more scientific the process of human rights measurement.

85 Ball, P. et al. Making the Case ... , op. cit; Ball, P. B. et al. How many Peru­vians have died ... , op. cit.; Landman, T. Studying Human Rights ... , op. cit., pp. 107-125.

LOS DERECHOS HUMAN OS, EL TERRORISMO Y LA ORGANIZACION DE LAS NACIONES UNIDAS: EL DERECHO INTERNACIONAL

PENAL RELATIVO AL TERRORISMO Y LOS DERECHOS HUMANOS

Autor DANIEL O'DONNELL: Recibi6 el titulo Juris Doctor de la Universidad del Estado de Nueva York en 1977. Fue director de investigaciones de la Comisi6n de Esclarecimiento Hist6rico de Guatemala en 1997 y di­rector adjunto del equipo de investigaci6n del Secretario General de las Naciones Unidas en la Republica DemocrMica del Congo en 1998. Ha sido consultor de la Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Nacio­nes Unidas para los Derechos Humanos, del Fondo de las Naciones Unidas para la Infancia, del Alto Comisionado de Naciones Unidas para los Refugiados, del Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Desa­rrollo, de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos y de varias organizaciones no gubernamentales. Ha dictado cursos en el Institu­to Internacional de Derechos Humanos de Estrasburgo, el Instituto Internacional de San Remo y en la Academia de Derechos Humanos y Derecho Humanitario de la American University en Washington. Es autor de Protecci6n inte1'11acional de los derechos hl/manos, Comisi6n Andina de Juristas, Lima, 1998, Derecho internacional de los derechos hu­manos: Normativa, jurisprudencia y doctrina de los sistemas universal e in­teramericano, Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos, Bogota, 2004 y Children are People Too: A guide to the Convention on the Rights of the Children for students and tea­chers, Anvil Press, Manila, 1996. Contacto: danodonnell03@yahoo.com

Resumen Este articulo es la segunda parte de uno publicado en el primer nu­mero de la Revista Iberoamericana de Derechos Humanos. La pri­mera parte contiene un resumen de los esfuerzos realizados porIa comunidad internacional, y en particular de la Organizaci6n de las Naciones Unidas (ONU), para hacer frente al terrorismo durante el siglo pas ado, y analiza la forma en que los hechos del 11 de septiem­bre de 2001, afectaron el fragi! equilibrio entre dos imperativos: la lu­cha contra el terrorismo y la defensa de los derechos humanos. Esta segunda parte analiza el Derecho Internacional Penal relativo al te­rrorismo y las dificultades que, hasta la fecha, han impedido a la ONU adoptar una definici6n generica de terrorismo, tan necesaria para Impedir que los esfuerzos desplegados por la comunidad inter­nacional para promover la lucha contra el terrorismo no produzcan consecuencias inaceptables en el respeto de los derechos humanos.

139