Evaluation
Evaluations undertaken by Rights and Humanity and other organisations are indicating that the human rights approach to development is a highly effective way of meeting human need. By 2003, Rights and Humanity and a number of other organisations had been implementing our human rights approach to development for several years. Although there was anecdotal evidence of the beneficial impact of this approach, it was important to establish more scientific methods of measuring the process of the implementation of this approach and evaluating its outcome.
Monitoring and evaluating the progress in the realisation of economic, social and political rights is much more challenging than measuring violations of civil and political rights. This brought to the fore the difficulty of developing qualitative indicators to complement quantitative indicators.
Rights and Humanity undertook this challenge
During 2003, Rights and Humanity conducted a comprehensive global review of existing methods of measuring human rights, good governance and democracy, in cooperation with Essex University, UK. This work was commissioned by the European Union’s Statistical Office, EUROSTAT.
In 2004, we undertook a major evaluation of UNICEF’s implementation of a human rights based approach to its work in Mozambique. This was the first ever scientific evaluation of the process of implementing a human rights approach. During this work we developed innovative tools for measurement and evaluation.