The 2019 Update of the SERF Index is now available. See HERE for information about what’s new and HERE to download the data.
Author: Alyssa Webb
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.
3rd Annual Meeting of Metrics for Human Rights and Development
The Third Annual Meeting of Metrics for Human Rights and Development was recently held in Madrid, Spain. Human rights and development practitioners took stock of the progress made and the challenges faced in monitoring economic and social rights.
SERF Index Featured by Social Watch Report
The 2012 Social Watch Report features the SERF Index as one of the three core indices of social process, together with the Basic Capabilities Index and Gender Equity Index). See announcement and full downloadable report.