Washington, D.C.
7-8 Abril 2011
Since the members of the UN negotiated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the world has made great human rights progress. But that progress is not easy to measure. The Universal Declaration has over 30 distinct human rights. Moreover, as Albert Einstein once warned "not everything that counts can be counted." Policymakers, activists, and scholars do not agree on how to count e.g. whether they should measure progress (as evidenced by new laws) or outcomes (as in educational outcomes).
But in recent years, three developments have helped increase our understanding of the relationship between human rights and development. First, Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen established a scholarly bridge between economics and human rights. He taught us that poverty, hunger, and a lack of education are conditions that restrict freedom and therefore respect for human rights provides a platform for economic growth (Vizard: 2005). Influenced by Sen, the UNDP produced the Human Development Index which focuses on state performance on capabilities. Second, in 2000, officials from 181 nations agreed to collaborate to cut global poverty in half by 2015. They also agreed to set targets and measure their progress towards achieving global human rights and development goals. Thus, the Millennium Development Goals made the question of how to measure progress more visible. Building on these insights, scholars and activists began to develop new metrics. Some designers focused not only on human rights but also on measures of governance and economic growth. For example, the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), published for the first time in the 2010 Report, redefined poverty as not simply the absence of money, but the variety of deprivations with which poor households typically contend. It can be deconstructed by region, ethnicity and other groupings as well as by dimension (living standards, education and health). The Human Opportunity Index (HOI) is a measure of society's progress in equitably providing opportunities for all children. HOI takes into account how the personal "circumstances" for which a child cannot be held accountable, like location or parental wealth, affect his/her probability of accessing basic services that are necessary to succeed in life, like timely education, vaccination, safe water or electricity. The index was first applied in the World Bank publication "Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean" in 2009 and has since been used in a number of countries.
This conference will examine these new metrics and how scholars, business leaders, and government officials are using them to devise cost-effective approaches to stimulating economic growth while advancing human rights.
Location: Lindner Family Commons
1959 E St NW Suite 602
April 7, 2011
12:30-1:00: Lunch will be served to conference attendees
Susan Ariel Aaronson, The George Washington University and The Institute for International Economic Policy.
Panel I 1:15-2:45 - Multidimensional Poverty Measurement: Uses for a new understanding of the meaning of poverty and deprivation.
Discussant: Ambar Narayan, World Bank
Panel II 2:45-4:15 - Measuring inequality of opportunities among children: the Human Opportunity Index.
Discussant: Dina Rhingold, The World Bank
4:15-4:30 - Coffee Break
Panel III 4:30-5:30 - New metrics for Assessing Human rights and how these metrics relate to development and governance
Nathaniel Heller, Global Integrity Index
Dani Kaufmann, Senior Fellow Brookings
8:00-9:00: Continental breakfast
Discussion: 9:00-10:00 Caveats on Human Rights Metrics:
Moderator: Charles Kenny, Center for Global Development
Panel IV 10:00-11:30 Using Datasets to Examine Human Rights and Economic Change
Daniel Meija, Univerita de los Andes, Colombia
Congressman Jim McGovern, Co-Chairman, Lantos Human Rights Commission, US Congress
Panel V 1:30-3:00: NGO and Business Perspectives on Metrics to assess Human Rights
Moderator: Hans J. Hogrefe, Former Dem. Staff Director, House Human Rights Commission
3:00-3:15: Break
3:15-4:30 New Governmental Strategies that Use Metrics and Link Economic Growth and Human Rights
Moderator: Susan Ariel Aaronson, The George Washington University and The Institute for International Economic Policy.
4:30-4:50: So, What do you think? Are these metrics useful? Can they be improved?Audience discussion led by Susan Aaronson
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