Index of Human Rights in the UN

From Richard Lawson (Act-UN member) April 2007
 
Dear friends
 
I am sending this to you as I believe you are (b) sympathetic to the idea of an Index of Human Rights in the UN, an instrument that will exert a steady positive on human rights performance of governments world wide.
 
At the recent UNA Conference in Warwick, the Index took a significant step forward with the adoption of this policy:
 
UNA-UK supports the further development of major indices of human development and security such as UNDP's Human Development Index and the Human Security Centre's Human Security Report, and welcomes the use of these indices by the UN system, especially in ascertaining the ability of states to enhance the welfare of their citizens and to assess their progress towards good governance. UNA-UK promotes greater use of these indices, in parallel with the UN human rights treaty bodies and associated mechanisms as early warning mechanisms, especially in the context of the implementation for the responsibility to protect.
 
Welcome though this is, the wording here is rather murky (the result of being composited and amended on the hoof). I hope that next year we can clarify it. The following is a suggested wording for a motion to Conference. Any ideas for improvement are welcome. We have 11 months to get it right, so we should be able to come up with something acceptable.  I have broken up the text for ease of reading and analysis, for the purposes of our deliberation.
 
Index of Governance [?Human Rights?] Motion
 
UNA-UK supports the further development of major indices of human development and security such as UNDP's Human Development Index and the Human Security Report,  
and welcomes the use of these indices by the UN, since indices make data more readily available to all than is the case with detailed reports.
 
We note that there is as yet no index in use within the UN that directly measures the human rights record of governments.  Given the central importance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UNA-UK calls for the development within the UN of an Index of Human Rights which, in parallel with the UN human rights treaty bodies, rapporteurs and associated mechanisms, will act as an early warning of a state's drift towards abuse of human rights, and will facilitate the implementation of the responsibility to protect policy.
 
 
Many thanks for your attention to this. Feel free to pass it on to anyone who might be interested.
 
For peace and justice
 
Richard Lawson April 2007
 

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Update - Measurements -  16 June 2007

About the accuracy of measurements. I searched, and behold, came up with none less than the World Bank.

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTWBIGOVANTCOR/Resources/1740479-1150402582357/2661829-1158008871017/booklet_decade_of_measuring_governance.pdf

Heavy-duty governance indices. They focus on :

• Voice and accountability, democracy, free expression, free association, media
• political stability, absence of violence
• governance quality
• regulatory quality - permitting private sector development
• rule of law
• corruption

Now we might have some doubts about No 4 (though I personally am not a socialist) but the rest of it is pretty much what we could endorse. 

Here are their findings

• Good governance pays a very large development dividend. An improvement in governance of one standard deviation can triple a nation’s per capita income in the long run. Higher income also correlates with better governance, but the causal relationship is mostly from governance to income.
• Although governance quality on average changes slowly, it can in some countries decline sharply in a few short years, but it can also quickly improve.
• Responses to specific questions on governance from citizens, firms, and country experts are important, because stakeholders make decisions based on those views and perceptions.
• Direct data from citizens, firms, and experts, even if they contain a subjective element, can paint a richer picture of actual conditions on the ground than counting laws and regulations, which in fact may not be enforced or observed.
• Aggregate indicators yield more reliable information about governance than any individual indicator can provide.
• Margins of error are implicit in all indicators (including specific measures as well as so-called objective indicators), although their imprecision may not be reported or acknowledged.
• Seemingly precise country rankings based on such indicators can, therefore, be misleading.
• Robust aggregate indicators, such as those discussed here, specify margins of error that should be taken into account when assessing the quality of governance and changes over time.

They specifically address measurement:

Governance can be measured, given the wide range of possible indicators now available.

None is perfect, of course. But the Worldwide Governance Indicators are transparent and precise about the degree of imprecision in the data. Falling short of total precision does not detract from the usefulness and relevance of the data: many meaningful comparisons are both feasible and useful for policy analysis.

So, we have backup from an unexpected source, and an unexpected argument - good governance = human rights protection => economic prosperity. Nobody can argue with that.

Or can they?

Richard