Defending Dignity A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions on Monitoring Economic, Social and Cultural Rights When deprivations of ESCR result from the specific actions of State or non-State actors, the causal chain, as illustrated above, is fairly direct and the relationship between the duty bearer and rights holder can be seen. In other words, “A”, “B”, “C” and “D” are all relatively clear. For example, a school refuses to enrol a child from a particular ethnic background. The child (“A”) is the rights holder. His or her entitlement (“B”) is to receive an education. The school (“C”) is the duty bearer. The obligation (“D”) is to not discriminate in their enrolment policy. In this context, the goal of monitoring is to establish “who did what to whom”, usually by interviewing victims, witnesses, and alleged perpetrators; collecting physical evidence; or conducting on-site inspections. The kind of information gathered through this fact-finding process is called “events-based” data. For example, in the case of a forced eviction, you could interview families who had been evicted to find out what happened before the eviction (e.g. were they consulted, given notice, able to appeal), during the eviction (e.g. what time of day did it occur, how many people were affected, was violence used) and after the eviction (e.g. where were they staying, what happened to their possessions, how had their lives been affected). However, as discussed in Chapter 1, some of the most chronic and entrenched deprivations of ESCR do not relate to specific actions. Instead, they result from dysfunctions or shortcomings in the way laws and policies are developed and, often more importantly, in the way they are implemented. In other words, they result from failures to fulfil ESCR. In these cases the links between the rights holder (“A”) and the duty bearer (“C”) is much more indirect. In fact, at first it may not even be clear exactly who “A” and “C” are, nor what “B” (the entitlement) and “D” (the corresponding duty) are. Take, for example, the issue of child malnutrition. It might not be possible to identify every single child affected by malnutrition. Even identifying which groups of children are particularly affected by malnutrition—for example teenage girls in rural areas or infants with migrant parents—might be difficult. In addition, identifying what they are entitled to can also be a challenge. Should they receive subsidised food? Cash transfers to their families? Meals in schools? The duty bearer will also likely be a government ministry, which involves numerous decision makers rather than a single individual. The obligation, as discussed further below, is multi-faceted. The goal of monitoring is to answer these questions. 3.2. WHAT MAKES POLICY ANALYSIS DIFFICULT FROM A HUMAN RIGHTS PERSPECTIVE? When the links between rights holders and duty bearers are indirect, what’s right and wrong is less black and white. This greyness means that assessing compliance with the obligation to fulfil means evaluating the reasonableness of a duty bearer’s actions. However, the normative criteria for judging reasonableness are themselves numerous and multi-dimensional, as discussed in Chapter 2. Because the obligation of result is defined more conditionally in relation to the fulfilment of ESCR (i.e. rights may be realized over time) and obligations of conduct are also more ambiguous (i.e. States commit to take steps subject to their maximum available resources), simply asking “who did what to whom” is not enough. We need to make an overall judgment about a particular policy, using human rights norms as our criteria. Methodologies for policy assessment are already fairly well defined. They tend to draw on the fields of economics, political science and public administration. As shown in the diagram below, policy assessment often follows a simple logic model that seeks to show the relationships between inputs, outputs and outcomes. As shown in the diagram on the right, human rights norms can be integrated into such a logic model to help illustrate the relationship between the conduct and the results of the State’s actions. 32