Measuring government’s human rights compliance via Rights Tracker

BANGKOK – Human rights violations tend to occur in secret, making the data underreported or even unreported. Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI), a global independent non-profit organization, keeps track of data and measures the compliance of governments in their international human rights obligations through the Rights Tracker. 

Keshia Mahmood, Southeast Asia Engagement Lead of HRMI, told Bulatlat in an interview that they aim to amplify the voices of activists and human rights advocates on the ground and make sense of the numbers.

“A lot of times, we tend to hear, especially from governments, that the human rights violations are unable to track and measure and that they are isolated cases,” Mahmood said. “That’s why we do this evidence-based advocacy and say, this is not an isolated incident. This is what our data shows.”

Mahmood is among the participants of the International Civil Society Week 2025 at the Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand. She met with fellow human rights workers, demonstrated the use of the Rights Tracker, and had a knowledge exchange with civil society. Over 1,000 activists and civil society joined the international gathering from November 1 to 5.

Read: Global activists strengthen solidarity in times of crises

Navigating the tool

Currently, Rights Tracker is monitoring 14 specific human rights: education, food, health, housing, work, assembly and association, expression, participation, and the freedoms in arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance, death penalty, extrajudicial execution, torture, and the right to freedom of religion and belief. It is based on three categories: Quality of Life, Safety from the State and Empowerment.

Based on the Rights Tracker, the Philippine government failed to reach the required benchmark in Quality of Life. The 100-percent benchmark, shown in the graph below, is only the bare minimum of the country’s international human rights obligation. If the government failed to achieve the 100 percent benchmark, it means that they failed to achieve the minimum standards for following human rights.

“This score tells us that the Philippines is only doing 75.2% of what should be possible right now with the resources it has. Since anything less than 100% indicates that a country is not meeting its current duty under international human rights law, our assessment is that the Philippines has a long way to go to meet its immediate economic and social rights duty,” the Rights Tracker analysis reads.

Mahmood stressed that their data came from the government’s own gross domestic product and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The data also shows the difference of the country’s international obligation if it is (1) income-adjusted and (2) compared to the global best, without taking the country’s income into consideration.

“In measuring economic, social, and cultural rights, we do it in a statistical methodology using an award-winning peer reviewed SERF index. We are able to do it purely research-based,” Mahmood added. “We measure almost all the countries in the world. For some, we have data up to 20 years.”

There is a different methodology for measuring the obligations in civil and political rights since it is gathered directly from the human rights workers, experts, journalists, and researchers in the field.

“It is an expert survey methodology. So the information comes from human rights experts on the ground, involved in primary data gathering. They are the ones who know the context the best,” Mahmood said.

In the case of the Philippines, the civil and political rights measurements are not yet available. HRMI is set to conduct the survey with the human rights experts next year. This is also the reason Mahmood is reaching out to civil society leaders and human rights workers in the ICSW 2025 to facilitate the surveys for the country’s situation.

Bangladesh’s data on civil and political rights show how the safety from the state and empowerment are measured. 

Based on the data, the Bangladesh government’s performance in civil and political rights are not good. The report stated: “Bangladesh’s Safety from the State score of 2.4 out of 10 suggests that many people are not safe from one or more of the following: arbitrary arrest, torture and ill-treatment, forced disappearance, execution, or extrajudicial killing.”

In terms of empowerment, the data reflect a lower score of 1.9 out of 10, suggesting that many people are not enjoying their civil liberties and political freedoms.

Rights Tracker data are in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United Nations, reports of international human rights organizations (e.g. Amnesty International, CIVICUS World Alliance, International Service for Human Rights), and even research. They are also being used by the National Human Rights Institutions (NHRI), and sometimes by the governments themselves. 

What is more appealing is that the Rights Tracker already tracked the vulnerable populations (or people at risk) in certain human rights. In 52 countries, they identified 41 people-at-risk groups. Some of them are indigenous peoples, women, LGBT people, children, people with disabilities, older people, journalists, human rights advocates, and trade unionists.

Complimenting local efforts

“What we aim to do is for this global data to complement the localized monitoring reports,” Mahmood said, stressing that their existing roster also gives context to the global human rights situation and the interconnectedness of economic, social, and cultural rights, as well as civil and political rights.

In the Philippines, human rights group Karapatan is consistent in monitoring the violations in civil and political rights. A look at their statistics and resources show the number of civil and political rights violations per quarter, year, and even across administrations.

Karapatan’s recent data report 129 extrajudicial killings (counterinsurgency-related), 288 arbitrary/illegal arrest, 15 enforced disappearances, 571 fake surrenders, and thousands more victims of indiscriminate firing, forced evacuation, and harassment. Meanwhile, the total number of political imprisonment is 737, with 164 arrested during the administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

In last year’s report, Bulatlat underscored the importance of quantitative data in assessing the human rights situation of a country, especially when duty-bearers attempt to downplay violations. An example is the number of drug-related extrajudicial killings (EJK) under the administration of former President Rodrigo Duterte. Government data reported 6,000 EJK victims, while human rights watchdogs reported more than 30,000.

Read: Empowering people to monitor human rights violations through Citizen Data

Mahmood hopes to work with local human rights organizations to start data gathering in countries where civil and political rights data are not yet available. “We think of our tracker as an advocacy tool. We get the data then we give it back to the hands of these advocates, and support them by empowering them with evidence they need to go on about their advocacy and help them with their work.” (DAA)

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Disclosure: The author is participating in the International Civil Society Week (ICWS) as a Young Journalist Fellow. 

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