Effective systems to measure and evaluate human rights goals need to be agreed, both to allow individuals and communities to hold their states to account for their progress, but also to assist states to monitor and improve their own performances.
The HRC then publishes "Concluding Observations" that evaluate human rights compliance by the reporting country.
First, it considers the ways in which HIA, as a study directly concerned with human welfare, is a more appropriate guide than environmental or social impact assessment for evaluating human rights impacts.
Such an alternative would include a "methodical way" to ensure that China abides by its trade treaties, a mechanism to evaluate its human rights record, and a code of conduct for American companies doing business in China, he said.
Such an alternative, he said, would include "a methodical way" to ensure that China abides by its treaties, a mechanism to evaluate its human rights record and a code of conduct for American companies doing business in China.
The argument is that the abuse of people in other countries – including the more than one million people who have been killed as a result of America's illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq – must now be taken into account when evaluating the human rights record of the United States.
More recently, NomoGaia piloted a tool for evaluating the human rights implications of the Disi Water Conveyance Project in Jordan.
A new HRC mechanism, the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), evaluates the human rights situation of all UN Member States every four and a half years and makes recommendations.
It is also the first attempt, to our knowledge, to evaluate the human rights contexts among MSM and to link individual level rights abrogation to HIV biological outcomes in the African context.
"These are issues that should be evaluated independently from human rights conditions in Cuba," said José Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch.
