Let's measure what we treasure: human rights | Anne-Marie Brook | TEDxWellington

Anne-Marie is a former OECD economist with a passion for helping to bring about systemic change. She believes that having good metrics for tracking the human rights performance of countries is a prerequisite for the collective action that is needed to transform our world for the better. She is co-founder and development lead for the Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI), based at Motu Research, a not-for-profit research institute based in Wellington. Anne-Marie is an Edmund Hillary Fellow, and has degrees in Psychology and Economics from the University of Otago and a Masters of Public Affairs from Princeton University.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

You understand the importance of light
and the truth, right?

Imagine a world without them.

I’m here to talk about
how we need more, of both.

I’m going to start with a true story

about the kinds of things that happen

when too much of the world
is operating in darkness.

On a warm October day in 2018,

a Saudi Arabian journalist
called Jamal Khashoggi

walked into the
Saudi Consulate in Istanbul,

to get some papers he needed
to marry his Turkish fiancée.

She waited outside for him for hours.

She never saw him again.

You may remember hearing about this case,

because it made headlines
around the world.

We know from a number
of different investigations

that Saudi government agents
went into the consulate,

killed Mr. Khashoggi

and dismembered his body.

Let me be clear about what I just said.

Government agents killed a journalist
to silence his truths.

These kinds of happenings are both
shocking and surprisingly common.

But I’m pretty sure
that if the Saudi government had known

that this case would make
headlines worldwide,

and stay there for weeks,

they wouldn’t have done it, right?

They wanted to commit
their crimes in the dark,

not in broad daylight for all to see.

Which raises some questions.

What if we could shine a brighter light

on the world’s injustices
and wrong-doings?

And what if, by doing so, we could
incentivise governments everywhere

to treat people with more respect

and listen to the voices of their critics
rather than silencing them?

This is the world
that I’m working to create.

I’d like you to take a moment -

you’re welcome to close your eyes -

and ask yourself this question:

what is it that you and your family need

to live in dignity and fulfill
your potential as human beings?

You might be thinking about good food
or a roof over your head,

access to healthcare or education,

or a good job, or social security,

or you might be thinking about
the freedom to be yourself

and speak your mind without fear
of arrest, torture, imprisonment or worse.

These things are not luxuries.
They are human rights.

They have been defined and set out
in international human rights law.

Countries have made promises
to respect them.

But until now,

no one has been tracking
how well each country is doing

on making sure every person
is able to enjoy each human right.

I know, I was surprised to learn this too.

For 20 years, I was an economist.

In the mid-2000s, I was working
at the OECD in Paris,

giving economic policy advice
to governments.

I really loved my job.

I found it super interesting to look at
each country through the economist lens

and figure out what advice to offer.

But there was one problem.

In every country, there were
human rights violations.

I was reading about mistreatment
of Kurds in Turkey

and Roma in Slovakia,

and I was always kind of looking for ways

that I could try and bring these
human rights issues into my reports.

But there was only so far I could go,

because when economists give advice,

it always has to be based
on empirical evidence,

and what I learned is that there was
no comprehensive database

tracking the human rights
performance of countries.

This is a problem.

This was a problem.

When you’re assessing
the state of the world,

chances are you’re going to be looking
first at the things you’ve got data for:

income per person,
trade and investment flows,

carbon emissions ...

It’s very difficult for any government

to put human rights
at the heart of its agenda,

if they don’t have the data they need.

After that, I just couldn’t let go
of the fact that there was this data gap.

A few years later,
after moving back to New Zealand,

I can remember being at home
with my son when he was little,

and after putting him to bed
for his afternoon nap,

I felt this magnetic pull
back to the computer

where I was researching
who was measuring human rights.

I was contacting the world’s experts
and asking them questions.

Why were human rights
not being systematically measured?

Could it be done?

Lots of the emails I sent got no reply.

But many of them did.

There were a few people who told me

that this idea of systematically
tracking human rights

was a good idea, but too ambitious

Only one or two people told me
it was impossible, ridiculous even.

I wasn’t too bothered.

My philosophy was to go
where the energy was.

And by following the energy,

I linked up with two super clever
human rights academics

who shared my vision,

Susan Randolph and Chad Clay,

and together we founded the
Human Rights Measurement Initiative,

or HRMI (pronounced 'hermi') for short.

Even before HRMI had $1 of funding,

we’ve been working with human rights
practitioners from around the world

to make sure that we produce data

that accurately reflects the situation
on the ground in different countries.

Our goal is to make sure
that you can see more

than just those few headline cases,
like Mr. Khashoggi's,

that make it into the news.

We are turning on
more lights around the world.

I feel both privileged and humbled
to be able to do the work that I do

because I know that in many other
countries around the world

human rights defenders are putting
their lives at risk every single day,

just for documenting
the injustices that they see.

So I’m really pleased that HRMI is
helping to amplify the voices

of these amazing people

so that their work can have more impact.

And I’m really pleased
that the collective vision that HRMI has

is no longer just a vision;
it’s now a collective endeavour.

We already have hundreds of human rights
practitioners around the world

contributing, on a volunteer basis,
their time and knowledge

to help turn on more lights,
fill these data gaps,

bring more attention
to what really matters.

So how do we measure the human rights
performance of countries?

So far, we’ve got two main methodologies.

First, whenever possible,
we use publicly available statistics.

For Quality of Life rights,

things like the rights to food,
education, health, housing and work,

this gives us really great
country coverage.

This map shows, in blue, all 169 countries

where we are tracking country performance
on the right to health.

A lot of the statistical indicators
that we look at are the same ones

used to monitor the United Nations'
Sustainable Development Goals.

But here’s the difference:
we don’t just look at the raw statistics.

We do something much more vital.

We convert them into numbers that make
sense from a human rights perspective.

To do this, we have adopted
an award-winning approach

that was developed by my HRMI co-founder,
Susan, and her colleagues.

And what it does is it judges
each country by a different benchmark

depending on that country’s
level of income.

So both richer countries
and poorer countries will get low scores

if they’re not using
their available resources

as effectively as other countries
at those income levels have done;

for example, to bring about
good health outcomes.

This approach is genius,

not only because it measures
how countries are doing

on the basis of how these rights are
defined in international law,

but also because it’s just logical.

It makes sense to hold high income
countries to a higher standard of account

for their health outcomes

than poorer countries, right?

Second, for civil and political rights,
we collect the data ourselves.

These rights include all sorts of things

from killings and torture
to voting rights and free speech.

You might be surprised to learn
that these are all things

that official statistics
just don’t keep track of.

So we brought in experts
from Amnesty International,

organisations like Human Rights Watch,

and together we developed an expert survey
so that we could collect this information

from people who are monitoring events
on the ground in each country.

We’re really happy with how well
our expert survey is working out.

So far, we have data
for these 19 countries,

and that number is growing every year.

Most importantly, people tell us

that our scores accurately reflect
the situation on the ground

in the countries that they
are knowledgeable about.

Let me introduce you
to some of our data insights

by sharing with you one quiz question.

'Which of these countries performs best

on respecting the right to freedom
from extrajudicial execution?

Jordan, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia,
the United States or Mexico?'

Now, while you think about it,

just let me give you
a little more information.

First, a definition:

extrajudicial killings are killings
by government agents,

like what happened to Mr. Khashoggi,

but more commonly things
like police shootings.

And let me also tell you a little more
about where the scores come from.

In February and March this year,

we sent our expert survey
to people monitoring human rights

in all five of these
countries, and others,

and each person told us
how well they think their country is doing

on respecting this right, and others.

And we use some really sophisticated
statistical techniques

for ensuring that different
people’s responses

can be made comparable with one another.

Okay, so do you have in mind

what you think the answer
to this question is?

The answer is Jordan.

And here you can see the scores
for all five of these countries.

The little vertical solid lines
that you see are our best estimate

of what the score is for each country.

Countries with wider uncertainty bands,
like Saudi Arabia’s,

tell us that we are less certain
exactly where the true score lies,

perhaps because there may
have been less agreement

among the respondents who filled in
our survey for Saudi Arabia.

Narrower uncertainty bands, like Mexico’s,

tell us that we are more certain
about what the score is for that country.

The overlap of the bands is important.

We can be confident that Jordan
is performing better than Venezuela

because their bands don’t overlap.

We're less confident exactly
what the relative ranking would be

of the countries that come next.

Of course this is just a subset of all
the countries we have data for.

Let me add in some more.

Here you can see New Zealand, Australia,
South Korea and the United Kingdom.

No country gets a perfect score

because in every country,
even New Zealand,

there is room for improvement.

How is this information useful?

HRMI is not an advocacy organisation,

so we don’t tell governments
what they could be doing differently.

But you can use our data for that purpose.

So let’s say your country
had a lowish score,

so it’s down this end of the scale,

and you want to move it that way.

What can you do?

I’m sure the possibilities are endless,
but let’s just discuss a few.

You could encourage your country to embark
on the challenging but vital task

of retraining your police force.

You could meet with vulnerable
and minority groups

and take their advice
on how to reform your institutions.

You could look at the laws and policies
of your better-performing neighbours

and you could also choose to do better.

We have a scoreboard like this for eight
different civil and political rights,

and for each one of them,
for each country and for each right,

we also collect information
on what is driving their scores.

So let’s say you wanted to know

why the United States
is performing so poorly on this right.

You could learn that part of the reason

is because there are too many
police shootings of people of colour.

Our US experts told us

that the people who are most at risk of
extrajudicial killing in the United States

are African Americans,

Latinx people,

Native Americans,

and children detained at the border.

These insights I've shared
from our database

are just some of the thousands
that you can find there,

and that’s before we have even expanded
our survey to all countries in the world.

I know that all of this
can feel quite heavy.

That’s because it is.

So I’m happy to share with you

that we also have some
really positive, good news stories

in HRMI’s database as well.

Here’s a good news chart
from the Africa region.

Each of the coloured sections
shows you one Quality of Life right,

and what you can see is there has been
slow but gradual improvement

in the performance, on average,
across the African continent.

And the good news story gets even better

because HRMI data also show
a gradual trend improvement

in the fulfillment of these rights
in all regions of the world.

This is a really positive
human rights story.

I love it and it fills me
with a lot of hope.

One thing that I’ve noticed

since making my career transition
from economist to co-founder of HRMI,

is that when I catch up
with old friends and I tell them

that what I’m now doing is measuring
the human rights performance of countries,

I sometimes get these
kind of somewhat blank looks.

When I used to tell people that I was
helping to improve economic performance,

I would get more nods of understanding.

And I get it.

The economy is really well measured.
People are used to hearing about it.

By contrast, human rights have been
under-reported, under-measured

and overlooked for too long.

Let’s change that.

Shedding a light on human rights

and bringing about a massive change
in the way our world works

is a huge global collaborative challenge,

and you can help.

We have started by shedding
a light on your country.

What does it reveal that you can act on?

What will you demand of your leaders?

What other countries can inspire yours

to better and bolder respect
for human rights?

What if world’s leaders summoned
their advisors and demanded answers?

What if they said not just, ‘Tell me how
to improve our economic performance!’,

but, ‘Tell me how to improve
our human rights performance'?

Numbers are not as sexy as stories.

They don’t pull on the heartstrings

in the same way.

But each one helps to light up our world,
showing us the way ahead.

Numbers help us figure out
what needs to change, and how.

Let’s build a world
where countries are competing,

not just in sport and to see
who can be the richest,

but to see who can treat
their people the best.

Let’s measure what we treasure.

Thank you.

(Applause)