Are human rights gaining or losing ground? This question has become relevant after two decades of unprecedented progress in developing human rights standards and institutions. The political climate during the Cold War created many obstacles, but the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and its aftermath during the following decade created a sense of promise and progress among human rights scholars and actors. Yet, today, actions, statements and initiatives questioning the legitimacy and validity of human rights, or even threatening their very existence, have become a regular part of current...

Human rights indicators are central to the application of human rights standards in context and relate essentially to measuring human rights realization, both qualitatively and quantitatively, connecting human rights obligations with empirical data and evidence.