Chapter 4:

Monitoring
What Is Human Rights Monitoring?
The term monitoring, as it is used in this publication, is the process of systematically
tracking activities of and actions by institutions, organizations or governmental bodies.
Monitoring has been an essential component of effective human rights work for a long time
and many organizations have gained valuable experience in their years of monitoring civil
and political rights in their countries. In its Handbook on Fact-Finding and Documentation of
Human Rights Violations, Forum-Asia explains that monitoring involves two interrelated
activities: collection of information (or fact- finding) and documentation. Human rights
organizations collect information and data "to determine the truth as accurately and
completely as possible" concerning the compliance of a government with its human rights
obligations. The handbook further explains that "documentation is the process of
systematically recording and organising the information for easy retrieval and
dissemination."

Focus and Purpose of Monitoring

The purpose and focus of an organization's monitoring activities will depend upon the issues
the organization addresses, the goals and priorities it has set to address them, and the
strategies it employs to do so. The following are examples of objectives and focuses of
monitoring:

1. providing immediate assistance: Human rights organizations may be called upon to

help individuals or communities experiencing a particular crisis or problem.
Monitoring in this situation may be aimed at gathering first-hand information from the
victims or affected communities in order to identify the source of the problem and
pursue administrative, legal or other action to obtain redress.
2. education and mobilization: Human rights monitoring may be undertaken "for the
purpose of mounting campaigns and publicity to create awareness among the public
and to mobilize them to put pressure on the authorities not only to stop violations but
also to prevent further violations." Fact-finding and documentation for this purpose
could focus on situations affecting large communities, such as a mass demolition of
homes, or on individual victims, to seek relief for the victims as well as to educate the
public about the nature of the human rights violations. (See Chapter 5 on Education
and Mobilization)
3. monitoring to assess "progressive realization": As described in Chapter 2,
organizations may choose to advocate for ESC rights using the provision in the
 ICESCR related to progressive realization. For this purpose, organizations may begin
by formulating a picture of the status of a government's commitment to ESC rights by
collecting documents and other information about policy statements, legislation, social
programs, court rulings, and so on, which pertain to a given right. They may compare,
over time, changes in the development of state activities affecting the right, thereby
establishing a record of conduct to demonstrate trends. Demonstration of regressions in
ESC rights policies and practices could be used in national courts or within
international fora to argue that the government is failing to fulfill its international
obligations.
4. litigation: Accurate fact-finding and documentation are a critical component of
building individual human rights claims and public interest cases. Monitoring activities
for litigation would include first-hand collection of facts and evidence related to the
specific claim. It would also involve research into the evolution of the laws being
invoked and analyzing court decisions related to ESC rights claims to understand prior
decisions of the courts. (See Chapter 6 on Policy Work, Legislative Advocacy and
Litigation).
5. undertaking legislative advocacy and policy formulation: Similar to the work
related to monitoring for "progressive realization", data collection for these activities
could involve collection of legislative documents, policy statements, social service
agency programs and plans. It could also involve collecting first-hand data from
affected communities and victims to provide evidence about the effect of existing
policies and laws, or the need for laws and policies where they do not currently exist.
(See Chapter 6 on Policy Work, Legislative Advocacy and Litigation).
6. making submissions to intergovernmental agencies: Some human rights
organizations may choose to submit reports or assist with filing complaints to
intergovernmental agencies and treaty bodies. For this purpose, the focus of monitoring
would be to observe the government's performance related to its international
commitments. One form of monitoring would be to observe the government's
compliance with recommendations produced by a treaty body in response to a
government's official report. (See Chapter 7 on Work with Intergovernmental Bodies).

Principles Related to Human Rights Monitoring

Though the type of information organizations seek and the institutions and actors they
monitor in their ESC rights work may differ to some extent from that related to civil and
political rights work, the fundamental principles and approaches are the same.

Impartiality and Accuracy

Forum-Asia notes,

Fact-finding must be thorough, accurate and impartial. It must not only be impartial and
accurate but must also be perceived as such. The results of fact-finding must be credible and
reliable. In short, abundant caution should be followed to ensure the credibility of
information collected and disseminated.

The extent to which the fact-finding and documentation is guided by human rights standards,
rather than by ideological or partisan interests, will largely determine the level of impartiality
of human rights monitoring. The accuracy of information is strengthened through the process
of corroboration, that is, collecting and comparing many pieces of evidence.

Application of Human Rights Standards

Human rights monitoring involves the use of international human rights standards and consti-
tutional rights guarantees to assess the information which is gathered. The standards are
applied to evaluate whether or not harm done is a question of human rights, whether an
individual case can be pursued as a rights case, whether proposed legislation or judicial
reform should be pursued as a matter of human rights and corresponding state obligation, and
so on.

Application of human rights standards to ESC rights monitoring is currently more difficult
than it is for civil and political rights because, as already stated, most of these rights are less
clearly defined. The standards can, nonetheless, help identify and define what information to
collect. The relationship of monitoring to the elaboration of ESC rights is dynamic and
dialectical: monitoring activities can help identify aspects of the core content of rights which
need further elaboration, and conversely, more elaborated standards and indicators better
guide activists to what they ought to monitor.

Utilizing Diverse Sources of Information

In collecting data, it is important to locate and utilize as many sources of information as
possible. Some potential sources were identified by workshop participants:

affected communities or individuals

periodic government budget or policy reports
reports by or interviews with service and advocacy NGOs
papers and studies produced by academic or research institutions
legislative and judicial records
human rights commissions or other quasi-governmental bodies
the press

Because large communities are affected by economic and social policies, often NGOs will
not have the time or financial resources to undertake the relevant primary data collection and
statistical analysis themselves and will have to rely on other sources of information for their
monitoring work. Groups should keep in mind that the information available through any
source is biased and limited. Activists need to be resourceful, creative and persistent in
identifying and using diverse sources of information.

A challenge activists may face in ESC data collection and monitoring is that a considerable
portion of the economic and social data collected will take the form of technical plans,
economic analyses and statistics -- information with which organizations that have
traditionally focused on civil and political rights may not be comfortable and may not have
the skills to analyze and understand. If such data is to be employed, it may be necessary to
recruit the help of someone who does have the technical background, or developing the
capacity to analyze and use such data within the organization itself. Most statistical
compilations and reports issued by non-human rights institutions do not use human rights
indicators and for this reason considerable cooperation between individuals experienced in
analyzing human rights standards and those with other technical expertise will be required.

Data Collection from and with Victims and Affected

Communities
Human rights organizations may collect information from affected communities and victims
in order to determine the facts necessary for seeking redress in a given situation.
Organizations may also undertake fact-finding in communities in order to present "case
studies" to help illustrate how figures about human rights trends generated through statistical
analysis manifest themselves on an individual basis. Such case studies give flesh to the local
and national nature of individual entitlements of, and state obligations to, the rights. Forum
Asia has outlined several important principles that activists should bear in mind when
seeking first-hand information from affected communities and victims (see box above).

 
Considerations in Fact-finding with Affected
Communities and Victims
Forum-Asia suggests that human rights monitors keep in mind the following principles
when working with affected communities and victims:

Monitors should be open-minded.

Affected communities and victims should be the primary concern of monitors and all
monitoring activities should be done with respect and empathy
Investigation into situations and cases can be a major intrusion into the lives of
individuals and communities; activists should undertake their work with this
awareness in mind.
Human rights fact-finding and documentation should be done in ways which are
sensitive to cultural contexts and norms.

Workshop participants also stressed that collection of information by and with the
community is critical to effective human rights activism. They expressed concern that too
often the value of this type of community involvement is ignored, leaving the data collection
and monitoring to "experts". However, individuals in the community have the most detailed
and intimate knowledge of the nature and extent of their needs and the impact of programs
and policies on their lives. As a result they should be involved not only in setting the agenda
and priorities for human rights activism, but in the collection of data and the monitoring of
events and conditions. Community monitoring is also a powerful tool for increasing the
people's awareness about their rights.

Data Collection from NGOs and Community-Based

Organizations
NGOs and community based organizations (CBOs) which provide services to communities,
such as legal aid groups, health-care providers and community development workers are
often very useful sources of information for human rights fact-finding. Practitioners have
direct contact with claimants or clients and develop an intimate understanding of the
problems and issues people face. They are well-situated to identify trends in the types of
complaints or problems communities bring and may, therefore be able to identify patterns
upon which human rights claims can be made.

 
The Galilee Society Collects Community Data
The Galilee Society was established by a group of local Arab health professional to address
the many health and sanitation problems of Arabs in Israel. In 1992, the Galilee Society
took a case to the International Water Tribunal (IWT), a non-governmental tribunal based in
Amsterdam, on behalf of Bedouin living in "unrecognized villages." The Galilee Society
had established community health clinics staffed by local health professionals. When there
 was an outbreak of hepatitis, the staffs of the clinics were able to establish a basis for
litigation at the IWT. Using information and data collected by the clinics in the
communities, the Society could demonstrate that the hepatitis outbreak was caused by dirty
water the communities were forced to use due to Israel's deliberate denial of water services
to them. The IWT ruled that there was not a justification for Israel to deny water to the
unrecognized villages. (Also see chapter 1 for more about the Galilee Society.) Using
Government Reports and Information

Most government agencies undertake regular data collection and analysis for the purpose of
policy formulation, budgeting and periodic reporting on implementation of programs. These
and other official reports are important sources of information. Human rights NGOs are
normally skeptical of government-generated data and information. However, workshop
participants explained that even a biased or skewed government report can be informative
and useful if analyzed with a critical eye. Sometimes, taking note of what is left out of a
report can be useful for discerning areas the government has avoided or neglected. Activists
can also use official data to hold governments accountable for what they claim to do,
employing data collected through other sources to evaluate actual performance.

Some activists also face difficulties collecting data from governmental sources. They
encounter very long and arduous processes of working through government bureaucracies
only to discover that the desired statistics are "classified" and unavailable to the public.
Freedom of information is a fundamental issue related to effective human rights monitoring
and advocacy. In many countries, disclosure mechanisms are seriously inadequate; this is an
important area of advocacy for and related to ESC rights activism.

Activists face a range of other difficulties in this area depending on the contexts within which
they operate. For those who rely on government reports as a source of information, a major
problem is the lack of consistency in what the government reports on from year to year; one
year the government may examine certain indicators while during the next period these
indicators may be altogether ignored. Furthermore, activists commonly relay that even when
they find pertinent statistics or information, that information has not been recorded in a way
that corresponds to the rights they seek to monitor. This problem underscores the need for
activists to develop human rights indicators and relate information to these indicators. It also
points to the need for organizations to develop their own skills in fact-finding and in
conducting surveys and other community research techniques, as well as in cross-checking
information.

In addition, human rights activists have found that in countries where corruption is a serious
problem, or where the ESC rights issues being explored are connected to highly controversial
or volatile situations, it can be dangerous to seek government information.

One source of information that should be particularly noted is official government reports to
intergovernmental agencies and treaty bodies. Under various treaties and other international
agreements, states parties generally have a reporting requirement. For example, states parties
to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights are required to submit
a report to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights every five years.
Similarly, states parties to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW) are required every four years to submit a report to that
convention's monitoring body. As described earlier, the recommendations made by these
bodies in response to government reports are a useful tool for tracking the compliance of
governments with their international obligations.
 Problems and Challenges
Though mentioned often throughout this resource, it deserves repeating that one of the
biggest challenges organizations initiating work in ESC rights face is the lack of elaboration
of the core contents of ESC rights. Deciding what exactly to monitor and how is especially
difficult when there is not yet clear understanding of what entitlements the rights entail, what
the fundamental state obligations are, and what, consequently, constitutes a violation of
rights. Workshop participants stressed, however, that when human rights activists began to
address civil and political rights, there was little clarity or agreement about the content of
these rights and it has only been through persistent work that the standards for these rights
are as detailed as they are today.

Another challenge in human rights monitoring relates to the role of non-state actors such as
national and multi-national companies. The human rights approach involves holding
governments accountable for their obligations based on international law and constitutional
guarantees. The implementation of social policies and functioning of economies, however,
involve a large and extremely complex pool of actors. In many situations, the actors
primarily responsible for infringing or denying individual's rights are non-state parties.
Effective human rights work ultimately must learn how best to address such actors, though
currently the question of standards and accountability of non-state actors is vague and
controversial. This presents an unresol

44. Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (Forum-Asia), Handbook on Fact-Finding and
Documentation of Human Rights Violations, Bangkok, 1994, p. 2.

45. Provea uses the term "victim" when referring to a deliberate action by the government or government officials.
It uses "affected group" to refer to situations when the government has failed or omitted to develop a policy or
where there is a lack of political will to address a problem for which it is responsible.

46. Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (Forum-Asia), Handbook on Fact-Finding and
Documentation of Human Rights Violations, Bangkok, 1994, p. 4.

47. Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (Forum-Asia), op. cit., p. 6.

Copyright Information

back to top