Protecting Human Rights—Report and Evaluation Criteria

This guide describes how to prepare the report on protection of human rights throughout your organization. It also describes the criteria and methods used by the HDHS examiners to evaluate and score the report. It is based on the text and principles of the United Nation’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”

The final report is limited to a maximum of 75 pages and is submitted to the HDHS network examiners for their evaluation. The score assigned to this report establishes the current Human Rights Index for the organization.

Optionally the report can be supplemented with results from the questionnaire on human rights.

Preparing The Report

Prepare the report using the following section headings. Fully address each topic described for that section. The narrative should fully answer the questions posed in each section. Section headings correspond to the text of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and are intended to correspond fully with, and in no way redefine, that declaration. Responses should address the full, complete, and comprehensive intent of the declaration.

Introduction, Governance, and Scope

Briefly describe the scope, extent, and governance style of the organization described by this report. Provide the names, titles, and brief description of authority and responsibility of the Head of State and key leadership and governing officials.

Section 1 - Declaration (35 points)

Describe the approach your organization takes to protecting freedom, preserving equality, and recognizing dignity for all people. Describe how this policy is communicated. Describe how adherence to the policy is encouraged, monitored, and measured. Quantitatively describe the results achieved, including recent trends.

Within your response, include answers to the following questions:

a. Intent, Policy, and Deployment

What are the Head of State's intentions regarding protecting freedom, preserving equality, and recognizing dignity for all people? How does the organization's Head of State systematically communicate those intentions? What policies are established to protect freedom, preserve equality, and recognize dignity for all? How comprehensive are those policies? Are these policies part of a constitution or other recognized legal declarations? How do leaders' personal actions reflect commitment to these policies? How are these polices communicated, understood, and acted on throughout the organization? What restrictions, exclusions, or limitations, if any, could prevent someone from fully benefitting from these policies? What freedoms are ensured? What rights are equally preserved? How is dignity recognized? What actions are taken to protect freedom, preserve equality, and recognize dignity for all? How comprehensive are these actions?

b. Monitoring and Compliance

How is support for the policies encouraged and monitored? How are actual and suspected violations of the policy discovered, reported, investigated, addressed, and corrected? How do you ensure the monitoring and compliance actions are systematic, fairly and uniformly applied, compassionate, comprehensive, and effective? How is progress in protecting freedom, preserving equality, and recognizing dignity measured? How has the approach improved over time?

c. Results and Trends

Use representative quantitative information to answer: How many people are free? How many people have equal rights? How many people live in dignity and respect? What are the recent trends?

Section 2 - Scope (35 points)

Describe the approach your organization takes to extending full human rights protections to all people. Quantitatively describe the extent and result of these human rights protections.

Within your response, include answers to the following questions:

a. Intent, Policy, and Deployment

What are the Head of State's intentions regarding extending full human rights protections to all? How does the organization's Head of State systematically communicate those intentions? What policies are established to extend full human rights protections to all? How comprehensive are those policies? Are these policies part of a constitution or other recognized legal declarations? How do leaders' personal actions reflect commitment to these policies? How are these polices communicated, understood, and acted on throughout the organization? What restrictions, exclusions, or limitations, if any, could prevent someone from fully benefitting from these policies? What actions are taken to extend full human rights protections to all? How comprehensive are these actions?

b. Monitoring and Compliance

How is support for the policies encouraged and monitored? How are actual and suspected violations of the policy discovered, reported, investigated, addressed, and corrected? How do you ensure the monitoring and compliance actions are systematic, fairly and uniformly applied, compassionate, comprehensive, and effective? How is progress in extending full human rights protections to all measured? How has the approach improved over time?

c. Results and Trends

Use representative quantitative information to answer: How many people have their human rights fully protected? What are the recent trends?

Section 3 - Security (35 points)

Describe the approach your organization takes to ensuring long life, liberty, and personal security for all people. Quantitatively describe the life expectancy, liberties, and security, including recent trends.

Within your response, include answers to the following questions:

a. Intent, Policy, and Deployment

What are the Head of State's intentions regarding ensuring long life, liberty, and personal security for all people? How does the organization's Head of State systematically communicate those intentions? What policies are established to ensuring long life, liberty, and personal security? How comprehensive are those policies? Are these policies part of a constitution or other recognized legal declarations? How do leaders' personal actions reflect commitment to these policies? How are these polices communicated, understood, and acted on throughout the organization? What restrictions, exclusions, or limitations, if any, could prevent someone from fully benefitting from these policies? What actions are taken to ensure long life, liberty, and personal security? How comprehensive are these actions?

b. Monitoring and Compliance

How is support for the policies encouraged and monitored? How are actual and suspected violations of the policy discovered, reported, investigated, addressed, and corrected? How do you ensure the monitoring and compliance actions are systematic, fairly and uniformly applied, compassionate, comprehensive, and effective? How is progress in ensuring long life, liberty, and personal security measured? How has the approach improved over time?

c. Results and Trends

Use representative quantitative information to answer: What is the life expectancy of the people? What are the largest contributing causes of death? How many people have their liberties fully protected? What are the rates of dehydration, starvation, crime, accident, injury, attack, neglect, abuse, disaster, serious illness, fatal illness and other causes of death, disease, injury, or disability? What are the recent trends?

Section 4 - Slavery (35 points)

Describe the approach your organization takes to eliminating and prohibiting slavery, servitude, and slave trade. Quantitatively describe the level of slavery, servitude, and slave trade that now exists, including recent trends.

Within your response, include answers to the following questions:

a. Intent, Policy, and Deployment

What are the Head of State's intentions regarding slavery, servitude, and slave trade? How does the organization's Head of State systematically communicate those intentions? What policies are established to abolish slavery, servitude, and slave trade? How comprehensive are those policies? Are these policies part of a constitution or other recognized legal declarations? How do leaders' personal actions reflect commitment to these policies? How are these polices communicated, understood, and acted on throughout the organization? What restrictions, exclusions, or limitations, if any, could prevent someone from fully benefitting from these policies? What actions are taken to eliminate slavery, servitude, and slave trade? How comprehensive are these actions?

b. Monitoring and Compliance

How is support for the policies encouraged and monitored? How are actual and suspected violations of the policy discovered, reported, investigated, addressed, and corrected? How do you ensure the monitoring and compliance actions are systematic, fairly and uniformly applied, compassionate, comprehensive, and effective? How is progress in abolishing slavery, servitude, and slave trade measured? How has the approach improved over time?

c. Results and Trends

UUse representative quantitative information to answer: How frequent and extensive are the practices of slavery, servitude, and slave trade within your organization? What are the recent trends?

Section 5 - Torture (35 points)

Section 6 - Legal Recognition (35 points)

Section 7 - Equal Protection (35 points)

Section 8 - Effective Remedies (30 points)

Section 9 - Arbitrary Arrest (35 points)

Section 10 - Fair Hearing (35 points)

Section 11 - Presumed Innocent (35 points)

Section 12 - Privacy Protections (30 points)

Section 13 - Freedom of Movement (30 points)

Section 14 - Asylum (30 points)

Section 15 - Rights of Nationality (35 points)

Section 16 - Marriage (35 points)

Section 17 - Property Ownership (30 points)

Section 18 - Religious Freedom (35 points)

Section 19 - Freedom of Expression (35 points)

Section 20 - Rights of Assembly (30 points)

Section 21 - Government by the People (35 points)

Section 22 - Economic, Social, and Cultural Security (35 points)

Section 23 - Rights to Work (30 points)

Section 24 - Leisure (30 points)

Section 25 - Adequate Standard of Living (35 points)

Section 26 - Education (35 points)

Section 27 - Cultural Participation (30 points)

Section 28 - Social Order (35 points)

Section 29 - Free and Full Development (30 points)

Section 30 - Preserving Human Rights (35 points)

The report can attain a total of 1000 possible points.

Glossary of Key Terms

This Glossary of Key Terms defines and briefly describes terms used throughout the report that are important to preserving human rights. As you may have noted, these key terms are presented in small caps when they are first used in the categories and scoring guidelines sections of this guideline. These definitions apply in all cases regardless of any particular typographical treatment used in the text.

All People: All humans born, living, travelling, detained, or visiting the country, region, territory, or organization, without exclusion of any kind or for any reason; all members of the human family.
Anecdotal: The term “anecdotal” refers to information that lacks specific methods, measures, deployment mechanisms, and evaluation, improvement, and learning factors. Anecdotal information frequently uses examples and describes individual activities rather than systematic approaches.; An anecdotal response to how leaders deploy government policy expectations might describe a specific occasion when a leader visited many of the country's regions. On the other hand, a systematic process might describe the communication methods used by all leaders to deliver policy expectations on a regular basis to all the people, the measures used to assess the effectiveness of the methods, and the tools and techniques used to evaluate and improve the communication methods.; See also the definition of “systematic”
Dignity: The qualities of worth and honor intrinsic to every person.
Equality: Definition
Freedom: Definition
Governance: Derive definition from MBNQA
Head of State: Definition
Human Rights: All the rights and freedoms described and proclaimed by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Leader: Definition
Slavery: Definition
Servitude: Definition
Slave Trade: Definition
Systematic: The term “systematic” refers to approaches that are well ordered, are repeatable, and use data and information so
learning is possible. In other words, approaches are systematic if they build in the opportunity for evaluation, improvement, and sharing, thereby permitting a gain in maturity. For use of the term, see the Scoring Guidelines
Trends: The term “trends” refers to numerical information that shows the direction and rate of change for an organization’s results. Trends provide a time sequence of organizational performance.; A minimum of three historical (not projected) data points generally is needed to begin to ascertain a trend. More data points are needed to define a statistically valid trend. The time period for a trend is determined by the cycle time of the process being measured. Shorter cycle times demand more frequent measurement, while longer cycle times might require longer time periods before meaningful trends can be determined.

Scoring Guidelines

The scoring of responses to the 30 Criteria Items are based on two evaluation dimensions: (1) Process and (2) Results. Specific factors for evaluating these dimensions are described in the tables below:

Process Section Scoring Guidelines:

Use these guidelines to score the non-quantitative (process description) portions of each item:

Score Guideline

0% or 5%
• No systematic approach to Item requirements is evident; information is anecdotal.
• Little or no deployment of any systematic approach is evident.
• An improvement orientation is not evident; improvement is achieved through reacting to problems.
• No organizational alignment is evident; individual areas or work units operate independently.

10%, 15%, 20%, or 25% • The beginning of a systematic approach to the basic requirements of the Item is evident.
• The approach is in the early stages of deployment in most areas or work units, inhibiting progress in achieving the basic requirements of the Item.
• Early stages of a transition from reacting to problems to a general improvement orientation are evident.
• The approach is aligned with other areas or work units largely through joint problem solving.

30%, 35%, 40%, or 45% • An effective, systematic approach, responsive to the basic requirements of the Item, is evident.
• The approach is deployed, although some areas or work units are in early stages of deployment.
• The beginning of a systematic approach to evaluation and improvement of key processes is evident.
• The approach is in the early stages of alignment with your basic organizational needs identified in response to the Organizational Profile and other Process Items.

50%, 55%, 60%, or 65% • An effective, systematic approach, responsive to the overall requirements of the Item, is evident.
• The approach is well deployed, although deployment may vary in some areas or work units.
• A fact-based, systematic evaluation and improvement process and some organizational learning, including innovation, are in place for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of key processes.
• The approach is aligned with your organizational needs identified in response to the Organizational Profile and other Process Items.

70%, 75%, 80%, or 85% • An effective, systematic approach, responsive to the multiple requirements of the Item, is evident.
• The approach is well deployed, with no significant gaps.
• Fact-based, systematic evaluation and improvement and organizational learning, including innovation, are key management tools; there is clear evidence of refinement as a result of organizational-level analysis and sharing.
• The approach is integrated with your organizational needs identified in response to the Organizational Profile and other Process Items.

90%, 95%, or 100% • An effective, systematic approach, fully responsive to the multiple requirements of the Item, is evident.
• The approach is fully deployed without significant weaknesses or gaps in any areas or work units.
• Fact-based, systematic evaluation and improvement and organizational learning through innovation are key organization wide tools; refinement and innovation, backed by analysis and sharing, are evident throughout the organization.
• The approach is well integrated with your organizational needs identified in response to the Organizational Profile and other Process Items.

Results Section Scoring Guidelines

Use these guidelines to score the quantitative (results) portions of each item:

Score	Guideline
0% or 5%	• There are no organizational performance results and/or poor results in areas reported. • trend data either are not reported or show mainly adverse trends. • Comparative information is not reported. • results are not reported for any areas of importance to the accomplishment of your organization’s mission.
10%, 15%, 20%, or 25%	• A few organizational performance results are reported, and early good performance levels are evident in a few areas. • Some trend data are reported, with some adverse trends evident. • Little or no comparative information is reported. • results are reported for a few areas of importance to the accomplishment of your organization’s mission.
30%, 35%, 40%, or 45%	• Good organizational performance levels are reported for some areas of importance to the Item requirements. • Some trend data are reported, and a majority of the trends presented are beneficial. • Early stages of obtaining comparative information are evident. results are reported for many areas of importance to the accomplishment of your organization’s mission.
50%, 55%, 60%, or 65%	• Good organizational performance levels are reported for most areas of importance to the Item requirements. • Beneficial trends are evident in areas of importance to the accomplishment of your organization’s mission. • Some current performance levels have been evaluated against relevant comparisons and/or benchmarks and show areas of good relative performance. • Organizational performance results are reported for most key customer, market, and process requirements.
70%, 75%, 80%, or 85%	• Good to excellent organizational performance levels are reported for most areas of importance to the Item requirements. • Beneficial trends have been sustained over time in most areas of importance to the accomplishment of your organization’s mission. • Many to most trends and current performance levels have been evaluated against relevant comparisons and/or benchmarks and show areas of leadership and very good relative performance. • Organizational performance results are reported for most key customer, market, process, and action plan requirements, and they include some projections of your future performance.
90%, 95%, or 100%	• Excellent organizational performance levels are reported for most areas of importance to the Item requirements. • Beneficial trends have been sustained over time in all areas of importance to the accomplishment of your organization’s mission. • Evidence of industry and benchmark leadership is demonstrated in many areas. • Organizational performance results fully address key customer, market, process, and action plan requirements, and they include projections of your future performance.

Veracity

The completeness and accuracy of the report will be assessed and verified by some combination of these crosschecks:

Accuracy Pledge—The report includes a pledge signed by the authors and head of state attesting to the accuracy and completeness of the report.
References to public documents—Public documents referred to in the report, or pertaining to the contents of the report will be examined and compared to the report contents. This may include government, legal, and policy documents, historic archives, reports, and records, or other forms of objective evidence.
Results consistent with approach—The quantitative results reported will be compared to the descriptive information to identify areas requiring clarification. Apparent inconsistencies within the report will be examined further.
Examiners' Queries—As the examiners study the report they will develop lists of questions and areas of clarification they wish to explore further. These will form the basis of questions posed to the authors of the report and others who can provide clarifying information.
Questionnaire results—The Protecting Human Rights Questionnaire may be administered to representative samples of the population. Apparent inconsistencies between the questionnaire results and the report will be examined further.
Independent eyewitness and news reports—Reports, interviews, photographs, and video available from people living in the area, visiting the area, or witnessing events and news from the area can be evaluated for consistency with the report.
Verification visits—Examiners may travel to the region, meet with people, ask questions, make observations, and examine representative living conditions first hand. Audit techniques will be used to compare the contents of the report to objective evidence found in the region.

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