Adrian Henriques, Head of Social Auditing at New Economics Foundation, argues for the development of methodologies to measure human rights As a matter of principle, Amnesty International has always avoided comparing, ranking or measuring human rights violations. In dealing with the corporate world, this presents AI with a paradox.
Companies are accustomed to judging their performance according to benchmarks.
It would go against the grain of corporate practice to implement a policy without performance indicators. NEF has worked with a number of companies to develop techniques for social accounting and auditing. Social accounting assesses the impact of an organisation on society by exploring its relations with its stakeholders staff, local community, customers and others. If the process is to be credible, then the dialogue with stakeholders must be meaningful and, most importantly, the key indicators which result from the accounting process must be developed by the stakeholders themselves, in line with international human rights instruments. So the paradox of how to measure human rights can perhaps be resolved if the assessment of the expression of rights involves the people affected.