AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program

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Report on Science and Human Rights

Summer 2005 Vol XXV, No. 1

Monitoring Human Rights: New AAAS Manuals

Sarah Olmstead

There has been increasing awareness in recent years that the ability to undertake systematic monitoring of the major international human rights instruments is central to evaluating the performance of states and holding them accountable for violations of these rights. Monitoring state compliance with international human rights standards is an exacting process with numerous scientific and methodological prerequisites. To assist in this process, the Science and Human Rights Program is developing a series of rights-specific manuals. Three have recently been completed. The full text of each can be down-loaded from the SHR website:

• Health: http://shr.aaas.org/manuals/rth.shtml
  
• Food: http://shr.aaas.org/manuals/rtf.shtml
  
• Work: http://shr.aaas.org/manuals/rtw.shtml
  
• Environmental Health: http://shr.aaas.org/manuals/ehi.shtml
  

The manual on the right to health is also available in a printed version.

The Right to Health: A resource manual for NGOs by Judith Asher

"In a clear style and accessible format, the Manual shows health professionals, their associations and other interested non-governmental organizations, some of the practical ways in which they can promote and monitor the right to health in their communities and countries. It considers the obligations of states in relationship to individuals within their borders, as well as the human rights responsibilities of states beyond their borders. As befits a human rights Manual, it has a particular preoccupation with the right to health of vulnerable, marginalized and otherwise disadvantaged groups and those living in poverty."

From the Forward to the Manual
Paul Hunt, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right of Everyone to the Enjoyment
of the Highest Attainable Standard of Physical and Mental Health

This resource manual, produced through a collaboration of the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program with HURIDOCS, and the Commonwealth Medical Trust (Commat), is intended to raise awareness of human rights perspectives on health, including the right to health. It provides strategies and tools that can be employed to promote and protect the right to health, monitor its implementation, and identify its violation. And it offers information and guidance on ways in which health professionals, their associations, and other non-governmental organizations can hold governments accountable for their obligations arising from the right to health.

The Right to Food: A resource manual for NGOs by Rolf Künnemann and Sandra Epal-Ratjen

"This most useful study comes at the right time; it concentrates on the human rights dimension of food security issues and does so with remarkable in-depth analysis...With great conceptual clarity, the linkage to human rights concepts and how to realize the human right to food is also addressed."

From the Forward to the Manual, Eibe Riedel, Vice-Chairperson UN Committee on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights

This resource manual for NGOs on the Right to Food was commissioned from FIAN International - FoodFirst Information and Action Network by the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program and HURIDOCS. The Manual provides an analysis of hunger and famine and takes the victims' perspective on food issues through case studies and supporting legal standards, relating them to the right to food. The authors investigate in detail how to use international and domestic law to realize the human right to food and the challenges that actors face in the fulfillment of this right. The manual also outlines the roles of the various actors involved in the process of mainstreaming human rights in food policies, strategies and laws, including the WTO Agreement on Agriculture and the genetic resources provisions of the TRIPS.

Monitoring Labor Rights: A resource manual for NGOs by Jonathan Rosenblum

"The manual fills a much-needed void in the world of sweatshops and codes of conduct because the lack of real examples of legitimate programs necessarily means that there are few people who know how to go about the job of independent monitoring...Read this manual and get a sense of the art of the possible. This is a very important first step in ending the charade that merely issuing a code of conduct means anything at all. Companies must be pressured to take the next step and develop an implementation plan that meets the standards outlined in the manual."

From the Forward to the Manual, Terry Collingsworth, Director, International Labor Rights Fund

Although codes of conduct have been in place for the last few years, there has been very little truly independent monitoring of the labor practices of multinational corporations. Monitoring Labor Rights: A Resource Manual for NGOs, which is the result of a collaboration of the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program with HURIDOCS and the International Labor Rights Fund, lays out, plainly, how companies and NGOs may go about the process of independently monitoring labor rights and improving labor standards.

Manual on Environmental Health Indicators and Benchmarks: Human Rights Perspectives by Karim Ahmed, Anya Ferring, and Lina Ibarra Ruiz

"Although numerous environmental indicators and benchmarks have been established in recent years by international agencies and national governments, not all such assessment tools or metrics are suitable for use in developing countries. This is because of limited resources and lack of trained personnel needed for collecting data and analyzing them in many developing regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America. For these reasons, in this manual a practical set of environmental health indicators and benchmarks is recommended that may be implemented at the local and regional levels with either existing resources or those that could be obtained with modest additional expenditure of funds and training of technical staff."

From Chapter 1 of the Manual, Karim Ahmed, Anya Ferring, and Lina Ibarra Ruiz

The Manual on Environmental Health Indicators and Benchmarks: Human Rights Perspectives, written by Karim Ahmed, Anya Ferring and Lina Ibarra Ruiz, is the most recent of the manuals developed by the Science and Human Rights Program. This resource, which was drafted in close cooperation with the Global Children's Health and Environment Fund and the National Council for Science and the Environment, is a pioneering effort to draw together the fields of environment and human health from a human rights point of view. It also offers a new approach to developing human rights related indicators and benchmarks. Based primarily on a human rights perspective, the Manual provides a compilation of environmental health indicators and benchmarks to determine the state of human health in urban and rural communities around the world. It provides a means through which community-based organizations, especially those located in developing countries, can begin to assess the extent of human health risks posed by a degraded environment in their community. The Manual can be downloaded from http://shr.aaas.org/manuals/ehi.shtml, where it can also be ordered in print.

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