Today, the United Nations Human Rights Council held a session exploring reforms of global economic rules to better align with human rights. Specifically, experts discussed developing indicators to measure progress other than Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The shortfalls of measuring a country’s headway using GDP is an issue of rising importance on global agendas and was a clear recommendation in the 2024 Pact for the Future, a UN declaration that pledges action on numerous issues.
The UN secretary-general stated in 2023 that “GDP does not account for human well-being, environmental sustainability, unpaid household services, such as care work, and the biased distributional dimensions of economic activity” and “fails to capture the human and environmental destruction of some economic activities.”
One of the panel’s experts, UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights Olivier de Schutter outlined human rights parameters to develop indicators beyond GDP in his June 2024 report to the Human Rights Council.
Developing indicators beyond GDP is not just a technical question: the indicators would reflect choices about how economies should be structured to best enable people and societies to thrive. Human rights should be at the core of these choices. They can strengthen new indicators by bringing legitimacy, helping states when balancing complex issues and interests, and adding transparency and accountability.
In a statement presented during the panel, Human Rights Watch emphasized that a human rights approach to these indicators requires taking account of:
- Power imbalances between rights-holders and duty-bearers, and between those who are economically privileged and those living in poverty, for instance, by measuring unequal health outcomes or access to education; and
- Non-monetary conditions of well-being: quality education; access to health care; a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment; and to enjoy one’s own culture are all human rights that are not adequately measured by income.
Human Rights Watch urges governments to move towards human rights economies by meaningfully integrating human rights into their discussions on the development of indicators beyond GDP. They should also work with the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs as they implement the Pact for the Future, which has a commitment to develop a framework on measures of progress on sustainable development to complement and go beyond GDP.
