Resource
What’s the Goal? What’s the Purpose? Observations on Human Rights Impact Assessment
Producer:
Bård Anders Andreassen & Hans-Otto Sano
Publication year:
2004
Source of the information:
Gaportal
This publication is part of the background material for the The Oslo Governance Forum (OGF).
The OGF took place on 3-5 October 2011, and was organised by the UNDP’s Democratic Governance Group in collaboration with United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF), ActionAid, ACT Alliance, World Bank Institute and PRIA Global Partnership. The Forum focused on participatory governance assessments and social accountability as means for strengthening democratic governance at the national and international level.
This paper addresses the use of indicators in assessing the impact of human rights projects in fulfilling their objectives. The terms “human rights projects” refer to development initiatives defined and designed to enhance human rights in societal contexts, and conducted by public or non-governmental organisations and actors. The paper highlights the need for formulating indicators that are accurate and appropriately related to the goals and objectives of human rights projects. It assumes that this has been neglected in international human rights project work, as well as in human rights research.
In this paper, the authors argue that even if there are many methodological problems connected to making accurate impact analysis in this field, it is still possible to develop better methods and analytical tools for making inferences about the impact of human rights projects than has been done so far.
