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From Advocacy to Impact: Assessing Human Rights
The Role of Assessment in Human Rights NGO Activities and Campaigns
The pressure for organizations working on human rights issues to evaluate their
work has traditionally been less than that applied on development organizations.
More
recently, however, there is a growing awareness of the need to account for
impact, not only to ensure that the “do no harm” mantra is respected, but also
to improve overall effectiveness. Additionally, there is growing pressure from
donors and civilians alike on human rights organizations to evaluate their
work. The Assessing Human Rights Project explores the impact of leading
human rights organizations, both on specific human rights issues and campaigns,
and on the role of these organizations in driving the development and
evolution of human rights culture broadly. We are particularly interested in
finding out more about how organizations working on human rights monitor,
evaluate, and assess the outputs, outcomes, and impacts of their activities
and advocacy.
Some of the driving questions of the Project include:
What kind of monitoring and evaluation do human rights organizations
currently undertake?
What is assessed, and how is that assessment made?
Are organizations looking at outputs (processes), outcomes
(behaviors, attitudes, knowledge), or impacts (policies changed,
number of violations decreased, etc)?
What tools and strategies are used for this assessment?
If organizations are not monitoring and evaluating,
why not?
If they would like to evaluate, but have not, what are
the main challenges for the organizations to implement
an M&E strategy?
What about their work, in particular, would organizations
be interested in assessing?
Having now completed the first phase of the project (compiling a literature review on existing studies and analyses in this field, and also conducting interviews with a number of leading human rights organizations on the questions outlined above), we have analyzed the data and are currently finalizing a draft of the findings. After receiving feedback and input from canvassed organizations on this draft, the project will move into its second phase: working with selected human rights organizations to explore how they can develop evaluation strategies (tools, metrics, and indicators) that correspond more appropriately to the unique challenges of human rights work.
This research is being led by Aude-Sophie Rodella-Boitreaud (PhD Candidate in Economics, Center for the Study and Research on International Development/ CERDI – France) and Elliott Prasse-Freeman (Research Associate with the Carr Center's Human rights and Social Movements Project, and MPA-ID candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School).
Please contact us if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.
We can be reached at prasse@post.harvard.edu or directly at 617-496-4548.
Preliminary bibliography includes:
“Monitoring and Evaluating Advocacy: A Scoping Study,”
Jennifer Chapman and Amboka Wameyo, ActionAid Working Paper
Series, ActionAid, London, 2001.
“Linking the levels?: The Organization of UK
Development NGOs’ Advocacy,”Alan Hudson, Sage Publications, UK, 2002.
“Evaluating the Effectiveness of DfID’s Influence with
Multilaterals: a Review of NGO Approaches to the Evaluation of
Advocacy Work,” Rick Davies, Unpublished paper for the
Department for International Development, August 2001.
“The Effectiveness of NGO Campaigning: Lessons from Practice,” Jennifer
Chapman and Thomas Fisher, Development in
Practice 10(2), 2000: 152–157.
“Northern NGO Advocacy: Perceptions, Reality and the
Challenge” Ian Anderson, Development in Practice,
Vol. 10, Issue 3/4, Aug 2000: 445-452
“Seeing Double: Human Rights Impact through Qualitative and
Quantitative Eyes,” Emilie M. Hafner-Burton and James Ron, World Politics, Volume 61, Number 2,
April 2009: 360-401.
