CESR published a new manual for national human rights institutions on monitoring ESCR

Publish Date: 
Thursday, October 8, 2015

The Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), in collaboration with the Asia-Pacific Forum (APF) released a new publication, “Defending Dignity: A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions on Monitoring Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.” This new manual addresses the particular methodological challenges of monitoring and enforcing ESCR, and seeks to strengthen the unique role of NHRIs in ensuring human rights accountability. The publication is divided into the following four parts, each of which is accompanied by motion graphics and explanatory videos: i) defining the issues to be monitored; ii) collecting and analyzing data; iii) assessing resources; and iv) communicating findings.

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Source: CESR's press release of 10/07/2015

The Asia-Pacific is home to more of the world’s poor than any other region. Some 1.8 billion people face daily deprivations, including lack of food, the risk of disease, hazardous work and precarious living conditions. For this reason, National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) in this part of the world are redoubling their efforts to ensure their governments comply with their economic, social and cultural rights obligations, and with the recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals that reinforce these. To support them in this effort, the Asia Pacific Forum (APF) and the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) are pleased to release a new manual designed to strengthen their role in monitoring and enforcing these rights.

Defending Dignity looks at the opportunities and challenges for monitoring human rights in a development context and sets out governments’ responsibilities to create conditions in which people can enjoy their economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights. It guides readers through OPERA, CESR’s groundbreaking framework that enables human rights defenders to combine both quantitative and qualitative data to produce compelling evidence when governments fail to meet their human rights responsibilities.

While OPERA is designed to be used by a wide variety of actors, from grassroots civil society groups to government policy-makers, Defending Dignity focuses in particular on how NHRIs can use it to best effect to fulfil their monitoring, reporting and adjudication functions in the comparatively neglected area of ESC rights. It explains how these institutions can define the issues to address, collect and analyze the necessary data, make a rigorous assessment of the resource issues at stake and then deliver their findings in the most impactful way. It also includes a series of case studies, setting out how some NHRIs are already monitoring economic and social rights, along with helpful tips and exercises designed to facilitate the work of NHRI staff.

The document is divided into four parts, each of which is accompanied by a motion graphic, in which a fictitious human rights officer called Ahn puts the manual to work in her hypothetical country, and explanatory videos in which leading human rights experts from both the Asia-Pacific and beyond discuss different facets of the ESC rights monitoring process.

Through these four steps, Defending Dignity addresses the particular methodological challenges of monitoring and enforcing ESC rights, and seeks to strengthen the unique role of NHRIs in ensuring accountability when these rights are violated. It was developed by CESR in consultation with a reference group composed of senior staff and Commissioners from a range of NHRIs in the Asia-Pacific Region. It grows out of CESR’s previous collaboration with the APF to support its members in New Zealand, Malaysia and Palestine, in which OPERA was deployed to situations as diverse as post-disaster reconstruction programs, the design of national development plans and access to education for children with disabilities.

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