Measuring the World: Indicators, Human Rights, and Global Governance
Measuring the World: Indicators, Human Rights, and Global Governance
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DOI：
10.1017/s0272503700034194
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发表时间：
2011-04
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影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
S. Merry
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作者：
S. Merry
这个小组是在上午9点召开的3月27日，星期五，主持人，纽约大学法学院的本尼迪克特·金斯伯里介绍了小组成员：美国透明国际的莱斯利·本顿、纽约大学的萨莉·恩格尔·梅里和哈佛肯尼迪学院的克里斯托弗·斯通。* 测量世界：指标、人权和全球治理随着指标越来越广泛地用于全球治理，特别是在发展规划和遵守人权方面，了解指标如何影响国际法律的监管进程越来越重要。指标被广泛用于评估发展和人类福祉、法治、少数群体的地位以及遵守人权原则的情况。指标作为知识和治理模式的起源可以追溯到世纪早期现代民族国家的建立，以及几个世纪前的企业管理实践。在商业监管领域开发的审计技术已经跨越到全球治理领域。指标在全球人权法领域引入了一种知识生产形式，通过这种形式，以数字衡量，否则会被掩盖的各种形式的侵权和不平等变得显而易见。例如，关于收入、健康、教育和酷刑的统计数据被用来评估遵守人权规范的情况和改善人权状况的进展。这些数字传达了客观真理的光环，便于比较。然而，指标通常掩盖其政治和理论根源。它们依赖于本身不透明的测量和计算实践。民间社会组织的世界也因越来越多地使用统计措施而发生了变化。需要量化民间社会组织的成就，并需要“循证”供资。人权组织的捐助者希望看到成功的指标，例如减少贩运人口或降低贫困和疾病的发生率。随着捐助者越来越接近企业，他们采用了基于企业的方法来核算生产力和成就。“慈善风险投资”的概念强调了这一新视角。这些组织的任务是制定衡量它们在供资期间所取得成就的标准。由于难以衡量“提高人权意识”等成就，非政府组织往往用培训次数或受训人数等替代指标来衡量这些成就。显然，使用量化的成绩衡量标准和采用基于这些衡量标准的排名制度正在改变这些组织的工作方式。指标是一种统计措施，用于将复杂的数据汇总为对决策者和公众有意义的简单数字或排名。他们倾向于忽视具体性和背景，而倾向于表面的，但标准化的知识。一项指标清楚地表明了与就一个问题作出知情决策有关的最重要的特征。(1)虽然指标是定量的，以比率、比率、百分比或数字表示，但有些指标是基于转化为数字的定性信息。例如，最近为《消除对妇女一切形式歧视公约》制定指标的工作采用了数量指标，如识字率、产妇死亡率和按性别分列的劳动力参与率，沿着质量指标，如是否存在平等继承权的立法，为教育机构中的女童规定配额的政策，以及为遭受暴力的妇女提供法律的援助服务和庇护所的方案。这些定性指标通过计算法律、庇护所等来量化，以产生一个数字。…
This panel was convened at 9:00 a.m., Friday, March 27, by its moderator, Benedict Kingsbury of New York University School of Law, who introduced the panelists: Leslie Benton of Transparency International-USA; Sally Engle Merry of New York University; and Christopher Stone of Harvard Kennedy School. * MEASURING THE WORLD: INDICATORS, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE As indicators become more widely used in global governance, particularly in the areas of development planning and human rights compliance, it is increasingly important to understand how they are affecting processes of international legal regulation. Indicators are widely used to assess development and human well-being, rule of law, the status of minorities, and compliance with human rights principles. The origins of indicators as modes of knowledge and governance stretch back to the creation of modern nation states in the early nineteenth century, and practices of business management a few centuries earlier. Technologies of audit developed in the sphere of business regulation have jumped domains to global governance. Indicators introduce into the field of global human rights law a form of knowledge production in which forms of violation and inequality, otherwise obscured, are made visible through numerical measures. Statistics on income, health, education, and torture, for example, are used to assess compliance with human rights norms and progress in improving human rights conditions. The numbers convey an aura of objective truth and facilitate comparisons. However, indicators typically conceal their political and theoretical origins. They rely on practices of measurement and counting that are themselves opaque. The world of civil society organizations has also been transformed by the increasing use of statistical measures. There are demands for quantifying the accomplishments of civil society organizations and for "evidence-based" funding. Donors to human rights organizations want indicators of success, such as reductions in trafficking in persons or diminished rates of poverty and disease. As donors move closer to business, they have adopted business-based means of accounting for productivity and accomplishments. The concept of "venture philanthropy" underscores this new perspective. Recipient organizations are tasked to develop measures of what they have accomplished within the period of funding. Given the difficulties of measuring accomplishments such as "increased awareness of human rights," NGOs tend to count proxies for these accomplishments, such as number of training sessions or number of people trained. Clearly, the use of quantitative measures of accomplishment and the introduction of ranking systems based on these measures is transforming the way these organizations do their work. Indicators are statistical measures that are used to summarize complex data into a simple number or rank that is meaningful to policy makers and the public. They tend to ignore specificity and context in favor of superficial, but standardized, knowledge. An indicator presents clearly the most important features relevant to informed decision-making about one issue or question. (1) Although indicators are quantitative, expressed in rates, ratios, percentages, or numbers, some are based on qualitative information converted into numbers. A recent effort to develop indicators for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), for example, uses quantitative indicators such as literacy rates, maternal mortality rates, and labor force participation rates that are sex-disaggregated, along with qualitative indicators such as the existence of legislation on equal inheritance rights, policies establishing quotas for girl children in educational institutions, and programs creating legal aid services and shelters for women victims of violence. These qualitative measures are quantified by counting laws, shelters, and so forth, to produce a number. …