ABSTRACT
The Human Rights Measurement Initiative, which was launched in 2015, has attempted to create a comprehensive set of indicators to track human rights performance worldwide. Critics often draw particular attention to problems of weak global and regional institutions, symbolized by a toothless monitoring process that states themselves effectively control; pervasive double-standards in the application of human rights policies and criticisms; and the regular subordination of human rights to other foreign policy goals. The unwillingness of states to accept enforceable international human rights obligations will similarly bedevil alternative political projects. In 2012 the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights published a study of the various data measurement models that the UN has used over the years, and a list of literally hundreds of indicators that could be used to measure human rights. International human rights law is a resource of some (but limited) value in the struggle for a more just world.
