Human rights issues are shaping the modern world. They define the expectations by which nations are judged and affect the policy of governments, corporations, and foundations. They have set the agenda in prosecutions at the International Criminal Court at the Hague, funding decisions by the International Monetary Fund, and corporate expansion programs by multinationals.
Statistics is central to the modern perspective on human rights. It allows researchers to measure the effect of health care policies, the penetration of educational opportunity, and progress towards gender equality. The new wave of entrepreneurial charities demands impact assessments and documentation of milestone achievement. Non-governmental organizations need statistics to build cases, conduct surveys, and target their efforts.
This book describes the statistics that underlie the social science research in human rights. It includes case studies, methodology, and research papers that discuss the fundamental measurement issues. It is intended as an introduction to applied human rights research.
The editors of the book are Jana Asher, David Banks, and Fritz Scheuren. Jana Asher led the first national human rights survey in Sierra Leone and provided statistical support for surveys in Iraq, Kosovo, East Timor and Peru. She is the former Senior Program Associate in the Science and Human Rights Program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. David Banks is a professor of statistics at Duke University, Fellow of the American Statistical Association, recipient of the Roger Herriott Award, and currently editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association. Fritz Scheuren is the past-president of the American Statistical Association, a Fellow of the ASA, and Vice-President of Statistics at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. He has done human rights statistics in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Peru, Guatemala, East Timor and Columbia, and he advises the Country of Georgia on their Millennium Challenge proposal.
