HIC-HLRN participated in the Third Annual Meeting of the International Network on Quantitative Methods for Human Rights and Development (Metrics for Human Rights and Development), hosted in Madrid by The Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR). The meeting, entitled ¨New Horizons in Economic and Social Rights Monitoring¨ took place on 22 and 23 March 2012.

The meeting will focus in particular on current challenges in monitoring economic and social rights fulfillment, as well as violations of those rights. The meeting gathered experts and practitioners in the field of ESCR and explored a growing body of innovative methods developed to assess and quantify socioeconomic and development policies through the lens of human rights principles, such as the duty of states to apply “maximum available resources” progressively to realize economic and social rights. The meeting provided an opportunity to take stock of lessons learnt from these approaches in practice, to explore how they can be used in complementary ways and further developed in different settings. The timing of the meeting coincided with the urgent need for more effective rights-based monitoring of economic policy at a time of economic recession and fiscal austerity.

HIC-HLRN coordinator Joseph Schechla presented the experience of its Members in the practical application of ESC rights indicators to assess the costs, losses and damages that arise from forced evictions in three countries: Kenya, Cameroon and India. This experience involved the common experience of applying the HLRN Eviction Impact Assessment (EvIA) tool and framework prior to, during and following forced evictions. He also shared with the participants the strategic opportunities for using the findings and persistent gaps and challenges in applying this methodology.

HLRN’s representative also participated in the conference workshop on the use of rights-based metrics and the post-2015 development agenda. That discussion focused on the experiences of monitoring “sustainable development” and the Millennium Development Goals. Participants also proposed ideas for developing right-based metrics to monitor the Social Development Goals proposed for adoption at the forthcoming Rio+20 summit.

The participants also joined in a critical discussion of the CESR draft framework for evaluating outcomes, policy efforts and resources for an overall assessment of compliance with the obligation to fulfill economic, social and cultural rights (a.k.a. the OPERA framework).