Adapting the United Nations Human Rights Indicators to measure and report the fulfillment of rights for people with disabilities

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights organized the development of a series of Human Rights Indicators (HRIs) in the past decade. The indicators follow the conceptural framework of identifying 4-5 attributes for a particular right (e.g. right to health), and structural, process, and outcome indicators for each attribute. The indicators rely primarily on socioeconomic and administrative statistics to reflect the status of human rights fulfillment, such as coverage of health insurance schemes. The indicators, when published regularly, are useful in monitoring the achievement of public policies. However, the HRIs were designed for the general population, and the situations of people with disabilities are overlooked for two reasons: (1) for parsimony, the number of indicators was limited and included those with the widest application, thus not the specific needs of poeple with disabilities; (2) in statistics people with disabilities could not be properly represented in random samplings because of small number or their disability status not recorded. To compose HRIs for people with disabilities, we initiated a series of expert round tables. The experts included NGOs representing and providing care to people with disabilities, parent groups, scholars, and government officials including statistical department. The attributes were political rights (voting, designated seats), social and economic rights (education, health care, work), obtain and impart information, and social security. For each attribute 10-15 indicators were selected. This indicators will be presented to the government; once adopted, improvements (or lack thereof) in the fulfillment of rights can be documented.