Human Rights Measurement Initiative
The Human Rights Measurement Initiative is a project hosted by Motu Economic and Public Policy Research in Wellington, New Zealand. It was established in 2016 and has established a number of metrics and data visualisation tools designed to measure civil and political rights, and, more recently, economic and social rights and to enable comparisons between different countries.[1]
It builds on the work of the CIRI Human Rights Data Project, and K. Chad Clay at the University of Georgia, who was a co-director of CIRI, is a cofounder of HRMI. He is particularly concerned to involved human rights practitioners in the field.[2] Metrics covering five economic and social rights and seven civil and political rights were released in 2018.[3] It uses the Social and Economic Rights Fulfillment Index developed at the University of Connecticut.[4]
The United States scored poorly among rich countries in their assessment in 2019. It scored low on citizens’ right to health and food, and on the right to live free from torture as well as the death penalty and deaths involving the police.[5]
In 2021 Saudi Arabia scored 2.4 out of 10 on overall safety from the state, the second worst state, although there was a marked improvement in its use of the death penalty.[6]
References
- "Project timeline". HRMI. 2021. Retrieved 1 April 2022.
- "Researchers create way to measure human rights". University of Georgia. 3 July 2018. Retrieved 1 April 2022.
- "Despite the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it remains difficult to monitor governments' performance because there are no comprehensive human rights measures. from www.shutterstock.com, CC BY-ND New data tool scores Australia and other countries on their human rights performance". The Conversation. 6 April 2018. Retrieved 1 April 2022.
- "Q&A: How Does Your Government Score on Rights?". Open Society Foundation. 12 August 2021. Retrieved 1 April 2022.
- "How safe is your state? U.S. scores low on human rights". Reuters. 6 June 2019. Retrieved 1 April 2022.
- "Saudi Arabia one of the world's worst abusers of human rights, according to index". Middle East Eye. 24 June 2021. Retrieved 1 April 2022.