Brief overview developed to generate the ICCPR follow-up world maps.
The development of the ICCPR follow-up world maps was carried out by the Centre in a close partnership with statisticians who computed each grades received by States Parties. The methodology adopted is the follwoing:
To compute a ‘score’ for each member state, letters were coded to numbers, as follows:
Note that A or 5 is the best possible score (highest level of cooperation), whereas E or 1 is the worst possible score (lowest level of cooperation). We then computed an average score for each State party.
For example, suppose that a State party received a B, a C, and C. Its average score would be (4 + 3 + 3) / 3 = 3.33. Or suppose that another State party received an E, a C, a B, and an E. Its average score would be (1 + 3 + 4 +1) / 4 = 2.25.
We also computed an average score for all States parties taken together, so that each State party could be compared to that overall average. For example, suppose that the average for all State parties taken together was 3. A member state who has an average score of 3.33 would be above that average, whereas a member state who has an average score of 2.25 would be below that average.
In the tabs Implementation Assessment and Ranking of the dashboard, State parties that are above the overall average are in shades of green, whereas member states that are below the overall average are in shades of red. Furthermore, darker shades of green or red mean a higher or lower grade, respectively.
Follow-up and implementation of recommendations is at the heart of the Centre's commitment, which considers that the role of civil society is not limited to documenting human rights violations, but to work for real change at the national level by developing effective advocacy with the authorities.
The difficulty of the project lies in unifying all the systems that the Committee has used over the years. The intent is to display the latest assessment given by the Committee to each State party.
State Parties Cooperation Map
This map includes States that, for whatever reason, have not received an assessment by the Committee yet. These are under the category ‘No Follow-up Ever’. This could be because:
1. The Committee has not published Concluding observations for them yet (either because the State has not submitted a periodic report or the Committee has not reviewed it yet).
2. The deadline for submitting the State Follow-up report has not passed yet, and thus the State can still submit it.
3. The latest assessment they received was done with the First system.
Implementation Assessment Map
This map does not take into account any assessment done under the First system, given that the information is significantly outdated and hard to compare with the lettered-gradings. Only the Two-rounds and the New system are considered, the first assessment being from 2012.
Moreover, to simplify the comparison, the Two-round system gradings have been unified with the New system ones, meaning that the numbers following each letter in the Two-rounds system have been erased (gradings B1 and B2 are simply considered as B, etc.).
Please note that some State parties received more recommendations than others (range: from 1 to 18, with a median of 7 per State party). This can be because the Committee sometimes issues a different number of recommendations to certain States, or because one particular recommendation contains several subparagraphs that receive multiple scores from the Committee. It is possible to see how many recommendations each State party has received by hovering over it in the map Implementation Assessment.
For more information on the follow-up procedure and the changes it has been thorugh over time, click here.
