Chapter III. NATIONAL AND SUBNATIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY MECHANISMS
A. Integrating human rights accountability into all steps of the policy cycle
The collectively agreed norms that human rights standards articulate provide a foundation for performance standards that all States should be expected to implement in their approach to the Millennium Development Goals and, more generally, in their public policies.
Human rights principles apply at all stages of policymaking, from initial planning to budgeting, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. At each phase, relevant Government officials are subject to public scrutiny to ensure that they are answerable for their decisions to those who have a stake in the policy choices made. To promote mechanisms of accountability that respect and promote human rights in the context of the Millennium Development Goals, it therefore becomes necessary to frame all operational guidance and policy documents at every stage in ways that are consistent with human rights standards.
© UN Photo / Albert Gonzalez Farran
The current MDG framework sets goals and targets, and associated indicators, with the aim of achieving specific human development outcomes, such as reduced maternal and child mortality, or universal completion of primary education. However, the processes report outcomes, not the effort invested to achieve them or the quality of the process. Human rights standards impose obligations of conduct as well as result. States and other duty bearers must achieve certain target results, but the policy efforts deployed, the means used and the process adopted for achieving them also matter.
The Goals’ focus on outcomes was intended to facilitate comparison of country performance.
However, they are poor at measuring accountability, because countries start off in very different situations, and very different levels of effort are required from them to achieve particular Goals. As a result, the measures do not provide an insight into the quality of a country’s performance or make clear the extent to which specific duty bearers have discharged their responsibilities. The obligation of conduct requires that States “take steps”104 (including legislative, judicial, administrative, financial, educational and social measures) “within the maximum extent of available resources”
with a view to achieving the full realization of economic, social and cultural rights,105 and to monitor and report on progress and to objectively justify any backsliding. To meet their human rights accountability obligations, States therefore need to show that the policy commitments and processes they put in place and the efforts they made to achieve the Goals comply with the substantive and procedural human rights principles outlined above.
Policy commitments include: whether the State has ratified relevant international human rights treaties without reservations and established a domestic legal framework that gives effect to them; whether policy statements and strategy documents in MDG-related areas refer to human rights standards and principles; and whether States apply these standards.
In terms of policy efforts, States would be required to ensure that MDG-related policies are designed and implemented in a manner that meets
human rights criteria of availability, accessibility, acceptability (including affordability) and quality (AAAQ). These criteria have been elaborated in the general comments of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and other United Nations treaty-monitoring bodies. Disaggregating and comparing indicators of policy effort over time would show whether policies practically improve the AAAQ of goods and services as well as access for groups facing discrimination. Indicators for measuring policy efforts should address financing, public expenditures, planning, coordination and human resources policies for the given sector, as is done for global monitoring of the water and sanitation Goals, for example.106
With respect to the human rights principle of progressive realization, the rate of progress a country is making may be a more meaningful gauge of effort than whether or not it has achieved a particular outcome.107 Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have been described as MDG failures, for example, because they are far from reaching the global targets, even though some have made real efforts and achieved considerable progress.
Conversely, the global MDG targets are insufficiently ambitious for many countries that have higher income and capacity. This indicates the need for metrics of progress that are more sensitive to policy efforts, as well as the need for targets and benchmarks to be adapted to national circumstances.
An approach to accountability anchored in human rights would also require States to show that their policymaking and implementation processes are in accordance with human rights principles. As already mentioned, key standards in this area include the rights to information and to participate in public affairs, and the freedoms of expression, assembly and association. Mechanisms to assess the adequacy of such processes might include:
indicators that measure the range and number of participatory forums that are available in the MDG context; the public’s awareness of them; the regularity of consultation; attendance rates; the social composition of those who attend; the extent to which recommendations made by participants are considered and acted upon by the authorities;
and perceptions of satisfaction among the stakeholders and the public.
WHO WILL BE ACCOUNTABLE? Human Rights and the Post-2015 Development Agenda 35 Figure III describes four key steps in national
policymaking in which the above human rights principles and standards should be integrated: planning, budgeting, monitoring and accountability.108
Methodologies for monitoring human rights compliance at each stage of the policy cycle can draw on the growing body of work on human rights impact assessment (HRIA). Its methods vary greatly and have been developed in different contexts for a variety of purposes. In general terms, however, such assessments measure the actual or likely impact of policy measures on the enjoyment of human rights norms, standards and principles as identified in international treaties and national legislation. In addition to measuring human rights outcomes, they also
examine issues of process. For example, the policymaking process should promote popular participation as much as possible, should not be discriminatory and should be accountable, including to parliament.
One of the areas in which Governments have begun to recognize the importance of HRIAs is trade policy and some are taking steps to implement them (see box 5). For example, the Canada-Colombia 2011 Free Trade Agreement requires both Governments to produce an annual HRIA of the Agreement. In November 2010 and again in September 2011, the European Parliament called upon the European Commission to undertake HRIAs in connection with trade policy, motivated—in part—by controversies over the Commission’s pursuit
Figure III. Integrating human rights into the “circle of accountability”
at the national level
Source: Adapted from Alicia Ely Yamin, “Toward transformative accountability: Applying a rights-based approach to fulfill maternal health”, Sur – International Journal on Human Rights, vol. 7, No. 12 (June 2010).
of “TRIPS plus” and agricultural liberalization conditions in a bilateral trade deal with India, threatening the rights to health and food of vulnerable populations. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food prepared guidelines on a HRIA of trade and investment agreements, which were put before the Human Rights Council in March 2012.