2000

2002

2005

Participation and Human Rights

Full datasets for each sub-sub-category are linked to in the text below
and at the foot of this page.

The political good of political freedom is essential to good governance. It includes Participation—the ability to contest elections freely; Respect for Basic Human Rights—all of the essential liberties and rights; and the Absence of Gender Discrimination. It is difficult to measure outcomes on human rights protection and promotion, and there are limited data available that cover all forty-eight countries of sub-Saharan Africa.¹ Under other categories in this Index, different aspects of human rights are measured. In particular, these include economic and social rights under the category of Human Development and necessary components of the protection of human rights under the category of Rule of Law, Transparency, and Corruption.

In addition to gender-based discrimination, which is explicitly addressed in the third sub-category of this section, there are other forms of group-based discrimination, such as discrimination against ethnic groups and religious minorities. These forms of discrimination are addressed in this category particularly through coding on respect for universal human rights and, under Safety and Security, through coding on the existence or absence of intrastate (including ethnic) conflict.

Without these components of political freedom, many other political goods that collectively compose good governance are difficult to exercise. In our overall score for this particular category, we weight each of the three components equally.

Participation and Human Rights in this category encompasses:

Participation

1. Competitive Executive Elections, based on whether official international observer missions judge national elections to be “free and fair.” Our coding is based on Economist Intelligence Unit reports of elections and other sources. A score of “2” indicates fully free and fair; “1” indicates partially free and fair; and “0” indicates not free and fair. For further information on this SSC and the others in this sub-category, see Special Paper 3 on the coding of elections.

2. Participation of main opposition candidates in executive elections, where 1=yes, 0=no. Our coding is based on Economist Intelligence Unit reports of elections and other sources.

3. Competitive Legislative Elections, based on whether official international observer missions judge national elections to be “free and fair.” Our coding is based on Economist Intelligence Unit reports of elections and other sources. A score of “2” indicates fully free and fair; “1” indicates partially free and fair; and “0” indicates not free and fair.

4. Participation of main opposition candidates in legislative elections, where 1=yes, 0=no. Our coding is based on Economist Intelligence Unit reports of elections and other sources.

Respect for Civil and Political Rights

1. Respect for physical rights (absence of extrajudicial killing, disappearances, torture, and political imprisonment), based on the “Physical Integrity Rights Index” of the Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Dataset. Scores in the Physical Integrity Rights Index range from a low of 0 to a possible high of 8, where 0 is no respect, based on a systematic annual coding for each country, using information from the U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices and Amnesty International’s Annual Report for the years in question.

2. Respect for civil rights (freedom of movement, political participation, worker's rights, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion), based on the “Empowerment Rights Index” of the Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Dataset. Scores range from 0 to 10, where 0 is no respect, and are based on a systematic annual coding for each country, based on data contained in the U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

3. Press freedom at the most basic level, measured in terms of the number of journalists killed each year as compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists. This is a measure of mortality only and does not capture other forms of intimidation of journalists and infringements on press freedom.

4. Press Freedom Index, from Reporters Without Borders (with technical assistance from the Statistics Institute of the University of Paris). The index scores are based on a survey of partner organizations, journalists, and others, highlighting fifty criteria. In the raw scores used in the Index of African Governance, low figures indicate a freer press and higher scores, a less free press.

Absence of Gender Discrimination

Gender discrimination affects both men and women. Given the limits of available data, however, the measures in this section focus in this first year of the Index on discrimination against women, who are generally more affected.²

1. Women’s Economic Rights, from the Cingranelli-Richards Human Rights Dataset, which scores each country on a scale of 0 (no economic rights) to 3 (all or nearly all rights guaranteed by law), based on a systematic coding of information contained in the U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

2. Women’s Political Rights, from the Cingranelli-Richards Human Rights Dataset, which scores each country on a scale of 0 (no rights) to 3 (political equality guaranteed by law and in practice), based on a systematic coding of information contained in the U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

3. Women’s Social Rights, from the Cingranelli-Richards Human Rights Dataset, which scores each country on a scale of 0 (no social rights) to 3 (all or nearly all social rights guaranteed by law), based on a systematic coding of information contained in the U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. We also collected information on the percentage of women parliamentarians and the percentage of women at the ministerial level, data compiled by the Inter- Parliamentary Union (IPU), and also reported by several other sources, including the UNDP's Human Development Report and the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Indicators. We chose not to use these figures because the measure we use for Women’s Political Rights incorporates these variables into its careful coding.

Notes and datasets for sub-sub-categories in Participation and Human Rights

¹ Some useful references and websites are: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR; http://www.ohchr.org/); United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Human Development Report 2000: Human Rights and Human Development (available at http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2000/en/); Human Rights Impact Resource Centre (http://www.humanrightsimpact.org/); Amnesty International (annual reports and other documents available at http://www.amnesty.org/); Human Rights Watch (http://www.hrw.org/); United Nations, “Report on Indicators for Monitoring Compliance with International Human Rights Instruments,” report prepared by the OHCHR for the Eighteenth Meeting of the Chairpersons of the Human Rights Treaty Bodies, HRI/MC/2006/7, 11 May 2006 (available at http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/icm-mc/documents.htm).

² For a review of data sources on gender, see our Special Paper 5, “Researcher’s Report: Data Sources on Gender,” by Renata Campante. Some other useful starting points for further information include the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) (available at http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/cedaw.htm); the UN Division for the Advancement of Women (http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/daw/index.html); the Gender and Social Development program of the United Nations Commission for Africa (http://www.uneca.org/eca_programmes/acgd/default.htm); the United Nations Development Fund for Women (http://www.unifem.org/); Human Rights Watch, in particular pages on Lesbian and Gay Rights (http://hrw.org/doc/?t=lgbt) and on Women’s Rights (http://hrw.org/women/); Amnesty International’s Stop Violence Against Women campaign (http://web.amnesty.org/actforwomen/index-eng); and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers (2005; available at http://archive.idea.int/women/parl/).