Rights Monitoring and Assessment using Quantitative Indicators of Law and Policy: International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

This article proposes an approach to assessing country action on economic and social rights based on transparent, comparable measures of law and policy. Using a new data set on rights, laws, and policies in 193 UN member states, this article applies a sample set of indicators to ICESCR rights to demonstrate the utility of this approach. For each indicator, we examine whether the 163 UN member states that are states parties to the ICESCR have enacted relevant laws and policies; we then compare their performance with that of countries that have not ratified the ICESCR and examine differences before and after ICESCR ratification within countries.