2022 Rights Tracker Human Rights Data Release

Until now the world hasn’t had a simple, transparent way to monitor how people are treated. This was a problem. When something is not measured, it is easily overlooked and undervalued.

The Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI) is filling this gap. We are working to produce a free, easy-to-access database of metrics, summarising human rights performance in countries around the world. With a good set of measures it will be easier to improve human rights.

We aim to be comprehensive by producing metrics that cover the full range of rights embodied in international law, particularly the collection of international treaties known as the International Bill of Human Rights.

Starting with some of the most frequently discussed rights, we are initially publishing metrics for the following 13 human rights:

• Right to Education
• Right to Food
• Right to Health
• Right to Housing
• Right to Work
• Right to Freedom from Arbitrary Arrest
• Right to Freedom from Disappearance
• Right to Freedom from the Death Penalty
• Right to Freedom from Extrajudicial Execution
• Right to Freedom from Torture
• Right to Assembly and Association
• Right to Opinion and Expression
• Right to Participate in Government

These cover five economic and social human rights and eight civil and political human rights.

Our vision and mission  

Our vision is for a world in which individuals, communities, governments, businesses, and civil society have a clear and nuanced understanding of their country’s human rights performance, and use that understanding to bring about legal and policy changes that improve people’s lives. 

In this world, all governments seek advice not just on how to grow their economies and increase their GDPs, but also on how to improve people’s lives by better respecting, protecting, and fulfilling their human rights obligations. 

HRMI’s contribution to this vision is through our mission:  

Our mission is to produce world-changing human rights data tools that track the human rights performance of countries. 

Our values

Collaboration – We draw on the knowledge of human rights experts in the countries we are developing metrics for, and build bridges between those experts, academics, and others to better understand and promote what improves human rights outcomes.

Usefulness – We exist to serve the world. We produce work that is useful and valuable for a range of people, and constantly iterate to improve its usefulness.

Rigour – We submit all our work for academic peer review and pursue the highest standards of rigour in producing our data.

Transparency – We are clear about our methodologies and their shortcomings, so that data users know where our measures have come from and can help initiate improvements.

Innovation – We actively seek fresh insights to advance human rights through the development of new measures and new ways of using them to impact change.

Independence – In order to be credible, we produce measures of human rights independent of governments and other actors who may have conflicts of interest.