Forwarded on behalf of Center for Economic and Social Rights and the International Network on Quantitative Methods for Human Rights and Development.
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We are pleased to announce that the third annual meeting of the network on quantitative methods in human rights and development - Metrics for Human Rights and Development - will be held in Madrid in May and in partnership with the Centre for Economic and Social Rights.

Please find attached the invitation.

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New Horizons in Economic and Social Rights Monitoring CESR, Madrid, 22-23 March 2012

Third Annual Meeting of the International Network on Quantitative Methods for Human Rights and Development (Metrics for Human Rights and Development)

Invitation and Call for Papers

The Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) and the International Network on Quantitative Methods for Human Rights and Development invite you to the meeting on ¨New Horizons in Economic and Social Rights Monitoring¨ to be held in Madrid on 22 and 23rd March 2012.

Hosted by the Centre for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) in Madrid, the meeting will serve as the third annual meeting of the International Network on Quantitative Methods for Human Rights and Development - Metrics for Human Rights. The meeting will focus in particular on current challenges in monitoring economic and social rights fulfillment.

Call for Papers/Presentations

We are calling for papers and presentations that focus on either the special theme of this year's meeting or the general themes of the Network. Those interested in presenting a paper or powerpoint are asked to submit an abstract to hrmeasurement@... by 1 February 2012.

Special Focus: Monitoring economic and social rights fulfillment.
A growing body of innovative methods has developed to assess socio-economic and development policies through the lens of human rights principles, such as the duty to use 'maximum available resources' to progressively realize economic and social rights. The meeting is an opportunity to take stock of lessons learnt from applying these approaches in practice, to explore how they can be used in complementary ways and further developed in different settings. The need for more effective rights-based monitoring of economic policy is all the more urgent at a time of economic recession and fiscal austerity.

Special focus themes
We invite papers and presentations on themes related to the special focus, including:
.lessons learnt from practical application of methods for monitoring the duty to fulfil ESC rights in different contexts .the experience of domestic courts, national human rights institutions, international human rights bodies and civil society organizations in this regard .trends in the use of ESC rights indicators, indices and benchmarks to assess progressive realization .the use of rights-based budget and tax analysis to monitor ¨maximum available resources¨, including in the context of fiscal austerity measures

General Themes

We are also open to presentations on a range of other topics relating to methods for monitoring human rights:

. methods for monitoring and operationalizing specific principles such as progressive realization or non-discrimination and civil and political rights in development .theoretical or critical perspectives on quantitative methods .the use of indicators and other measurement tools and frameworks; .rights-based budget and tax analysis; .quantitative trends, new data sets, data collection and coding etc.

Limited funding is available for travel and accommodation for a number of those invited to present.

The Center for Economic and Social Rights works to promote recognition and enforcement of these rights through research and advocacy at the global and national levels. A particular focus of its work is the development of methodologies for monitoring public policies from an economic and social rights perspective.

The Network aims to create synergies amongst scholars and practitioners for the use of human rights assessment methods as monitoring, advocacy and research tools for policy change. It serves as a space for sharing ideas and work, a forum for debating methodological issues and a place for identifying operational synergies and research opportunities.

Organisers:

Gaby Oré Aguilar and Ignacio Saiz, (CESR) Malcolm Langford (University of Oslo) Sakiko Fukuda-Parr (The New School)