KATHMANDU, September 28 (IPS) – Welcome to the Strive podcast, where we chat with new voices about new ideas for creating a more equitable and sustainable world. My name is Marty Logan.
Before we get to today’s episode, if you like Striving I encourage you to share it with a friend so they can watch the show. If you’re listening in a podcast app, just click the share icon (the one with the up arrow). Or you can share a post on ours Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn channel.
Today we are learning about what I think is a great new tool to hold governments accountable for their human rights obligations. In fact Initiative to measure human rights It’s six years old, so it’s not brand new, but it was a revelation for me when I came across it recently.
What I like is how the Initiative’s Rights Watcher assigns a score to a government’s record of a particular right, say the right to education, based on how other countries with the same level of resources have done so. perform. As a journalist, I still believe in naming and shaming approaches but as a guest today, said Stephen Bagwell of the Initiative and the University of Missouri, St Louis, the Governments often respond to reports of rights violations by dismissing them as exaggerated or given. up. It is much harder to disprove the HRMI score, which is largely data-driven.
I also like an analogy that Stephen uses to explain why human rights should be measured: the Sustainable Development Goals. There are all sorts of updates on progress towards the 2030 SDGs, when in reality governments have no legal obligation to achieve the targets. But hundreds of countries have ratified various human rights instruments, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child or the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – but none have systematically followed their progress. them in meeting those obligations.
A note about the acronyms you will hear in today’s episode: ICCPR is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, mentioned above, and ICESCR is the International Covenant on Economic Rights, social and cultural. Both are fundamental human rights documents. The former law is considered law in 173 countries and ICESCR in 171 countries.
Resources:
Initiative to measure human rights
Nepal page on HRMI quyền Rights Tracker
© Inter Press Service (2022) – All rights reservedOrigin: Inter Press Service
