Collaborative monitoring of human rights in Palestine and Israel

C4 Fellow Bassma Ali has been leading job growth and economic transformation in Gaza since graduating with a computer science degree and discovering the reality of a job market where 92% of women in IT were unemployed; and where the relationship with Israel made daily life hazardous and depressing.
“People in Israel and Palestine need to hear each other’s stories,” Bassma says. “Our eyes need to be opened to what life is like for each other. One set of stories that is missing are those stories that can contribute to the production of robust data on the human rights situation in both Israel and Palestine.”

“That’s where we come in,” says C1 Fellow Anne-Marie Brook, co-founder of the Human Rights Measurement Initiative. “We can amplify the voices of human rights practitioners in the region, turn their stories into hard numbers, to increase understanding, and build bridges between communities.”
With your support we will work with communities in Palestine and Israel to design bespoke measurement tools. We will publish annual scores for a range of human rights in both countries, making the data freely available on our online Rights Tracker. Human rights stakeholders – governments, activists, media, investors, and ordinary people – can use the annual scores to press for change.

The Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI) is an independent global human rights data
platform, with its main base of operations in New Zealand, and with teams in the United States
and elsewhere. HRMI is working with NGO partners worldwide and producing reliable and
nuanced scores that track country-level human rights performance on 13 rights so far, available
on the Rights Tracker. No other organisation is producing a comprehensive dataset of country-
level human rights data, and HRMI has fast established credibility, just four years after publishing
its first dataset.

HRMI’s vision is for a world in which individuals, communities, governments, businesses, and
civil society have a clear and nuanced understanding of their country’s human rights
performance, and use that understanding to bring about legal and policy changes that improve
people’s lives.

HRMI is now looking to expand its expert survey data collection tool to Israel/Palestine and is
forming a working group (led by C4 Fellow Bassma Ali) who can help to guide the development
of a bespoke survey suitable to the unique and challenging circumstances of that region.
HRMI is a global collaboration of individuals and host institutions who share a collective vision.
HRMI has previously received funding via Motu Economic and Public Policy Research from the
Open Society Foundations, the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Ford
Foundation, the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, and others.

HRMI is the first and only global initiative systematically and comprehensively tracking the
human rights performance of countries. We measure how well countries are keeping their human
rights promises as defined in United Nations treaties.
Our expert survey methodology has been peer-reviewed and featured in the Journal of Human
Rights and Journal of Peace Research. HRMI produces annual quantitative data on civil and political rights for a growing number of countries each year (39 countries in 2021, rising to cover
half the world’s population in 2022).

•        HRMI develops partnerships with human rights stakeholders in the region.
•        HRMI and stakeholders co-design a secure online survey which collects information on civil
and political rights as well as groups of people at risk of rights violations.
•        Human rights practitioners from both regions share their knowledge through the survey.
•        HRMI analyses the responses and publishes the data analysis on HRMI Rights Tracker,
making the data freely available to all.
•        Stakeholders in the region use the data to improve people lives and create bridges of
understanding between the two countries.

Support from the EHF Collective Fund will kick-start our work in Palestine/Israel.
More robust human rights data for the region will increase understanding between all parties.
You can be part of this project to and contribute to lasting peace and the wellbeing and thriving of
people throughout the region.