The Universal Rights Group is an independent think tank located in Geneva that is focused on “analyzing and strengthening global human rights policy”. Among other things, “it provides a forum for discussion and debate” on human rights issues that seeks to bridge the gap between the international human rights system on the one hand and policy-makers and other stakeholders on the other. The International SERF Index is now included as one of the key indicators in their new “State of the World: Human Rights and Democracy” data portal tracking human rights performance across the globe.
Author: Alyssa Webb
2021 Update International SERF Index now Available
The 2021 update of the International SERF Index is now available! This year’s update re-estimated all of the achievement possibility frontiers used to benchmark State obligations using the new round of the International Comparison Project providing per capita income data measured in 2017 PPP$. This year’s update continues to include sex disaggregation of many scores on many right aspects and the excess income metric scores introduced last year. You can find an overview of the 2021 Update HERE and download the 2021 Update data HERE.
2019 SERF Index Update is Now Available
Announcing New Partnership
The Economic and Social Rights Empowerment Initiative has joined forces with the Human Rights Measurement Initiative, HRMI. HRMI has adopted the SERF Index and underlying metrics as its economic and social rights scores for their “income-adjusted” quality of life metrics. HRMI proides extensive data visualization tools showing country performance over time and comparing country performance at a given time. Explore HRMI’s data HERE.
Fulfilling Social and Economic Rights
The SERF team’s book, Fulfilling Social and Economic Rights (Oxford University Press) has received the book of the year award from the American Political Science Associations Human Rights Section.
Fulfilling Social and Economic Rights
The SERF team’s book, Fulfilling Social and Economic Rights (Oxford University Press) has been nominated for the 2017 Grawemeyer Award.
Food Security in South Africa: Human Rights and Entitlements Perspectives
Food Security in South Africa: Human Rights and Entitlements Perspectives (Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and Viviene Taylor eds.) has just been published by Capetown University press (Capetown University Press, 2016).
Achievement Possibilities Frontier
A proposal for resolving a conflict between setting universal goals and country specific benchmarks for post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and Susan Randolph propose a methodology for setting nationally specific benchmarks taking account of levels of development using the Achievement Possibilities Frontier: Achievements Possibilities Frontier
Seminar: Right to Food and the Role of Economic and Social Policy in South Africa
South Africa leads the world in the development of legal provisions for economic and social rights yet SERF scores show mediocre performance in fulfilling the right to food. To examine this paradox, a seminar on the Right to Food and the role of economic and social policy was held at the University of Cape Town on May 30-31, 2012. Speakers and participants included leading researchers, jurists, parliamentarians and members of the National Human Rights Commission and the National Development Commission. Select documents are available here:
- Battersby, Jane. “Urban Food Security”
- Cousins, Ben. “Agricultural Policy and the Right to Food in South Africa”
- Fukuda-Parr, Sakiko. “The Right to Food in South Africa”
- Fukuda-Parr, Sakiko. “The Right to Food: The Role of Economic and Social Policy”
- Hertel, Shareen. “Social Movements and the Politics of Right to Food Campaigns”
- Jacobs, Peter. “Who and Where are the Food Insecure Rural Households?”
- Langba, John. “Food Security in South Africa”
- May, Julia. “Inequities in Under-Five Child Nutritional Status in South Africa”
- Nyembezi, Nkosikhulule. “The Politics of the Right to Food”
- Randolph, Susan. “The Right to Food”
- Taylor,Viviene. “Social Policies and Food Security in South Africa”
SERF Index Historical Trends 1970-2010
Find out which countries have progressed and which have regressed in meeting the commitments to fulfill economic and social rights in the newly released SERF Index Historical Trends 1970-2010.