The Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI) is a
non-profit organisation primarily housed in
Wellington,
New Zealand
New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...
.
It was established in 2016 by Anne-Marie Brook, K. Chad Clay, and Susan Randolph, experts in
human rights
Human rights are universally recognized Morality, moral principles or Social norm, norms that establish standards of human behavior and are often protected by both Municipal law, national and international laws. These rights are considered ...
and economics, who noticed a gap in easily accessible and understandable human rights data. HRMI produces a free database of metrics, summarizing human rights performance in countries around the world. They believe that with a good set of measures, it will be easier to improve human rights around the world.
Methodology
HRMI's database of metrics can be found and explored using the Rights Tracker. Using the Rights Tracker, one can explore performance for individual countries, rights, or specific people groups at risk for having their rights violated.
HRMI currently measures a total of 13 human rights, including Quality of Life Rights, Safety from the State Rights, and Empowerment Rights. They aim to continuously expand their measurement 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.
The Human Rights Measurement Initiative's approach to measuring
civil and political rights is unique to the human rights field. They rely on a peer-reviewed methodology drawing on a multilingual survey of human rights experts from around the world. This approach works to solve the difficulty of measuring civil and political rights by getting information directly from the human rights researchers and practitioners who are monitoring events in each country. Their
economic and social rights data comes from the Social and Economic Rights Fulfillment (SERF) Index, developed by
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Terra Lawson-Remer, and Susan Randolph. In 2019, their methodology was awarded the
Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. This data is constructed from internationally comparable, publicly available, objective data, such as statistics on infant mortality and school enrollment.
Impact
HRMI data has been cited by publications including ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' and ''
Al Jazeera''. Additionally, HRMI's data has been used by various academic publications, advocacy and government reports, human rights institutes, and more.
[{{Cite web , title=Data in Action , url=https://humanrightsmeasurement.org/data-in-action/ , website=Human Rights Measurement Initiative]
References
Organisations based in Wellington
2016 establishments in New Zealand
Human rights organizations