The world seems to be getting worse and worse; wars, human rights violations, poverty, violence, etc. Even a good number of the studies conducted by organizations like Freedom House seem to depict a world stagnated, if not moving backward in respect to human rights, but is it really as bad as it all seems?

Is it possible that this visually grim depiction is not accurate or representative of reality? At face value, the empirical data presented seems to comply with the central claims put forth by those that argue that advancement in human rights respect has stalled. But there lies a foundational issue with most data presented in this matter, which is an issue that lies in origin. According to an article for Foreign Policy: “The problem is that the rules used to do this summarizing have remained more or less consistent over time, but the reports themselves have not. Over the past four decades, the human rights reporting process and the international legal context in which that reporting occurs have both changed significantly." The biggest change has been that these organizations are now much more aware of the violations taking place; the more you know, the worse things look.

Due to technological advancement, things like smartphones, social media, and internet access, it is much more likely that these violations are seen and documented. In other words, those reporting and collecting this data are much more likely to be aware of and see these violations than they would be at any point in the past. Similarly, these organizations have simply become better at what they do.

“In a 2013 paper, Anne Marie Clark and Kathryn Sikkink note that both the State Department and Amnesty International have greatly increased their capacity to track violations. According to Clark and Sikkink, the State Department had just one human rights staffer in the early 1970s; by the end of the 1990s, however, the part of the agency that prepares the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices had over 100 staff. Between 1975 and 1985, Amnesty International doubled its staff to 205 employees. These organizations have also learned to collaborate more closely with each other and with local civic groups, further improving their monitoring power.”

Perhaps most importantly, standards have changed. Things and actions that constitute a violation of human rights today did not necessarily do so before the creation of these rules by international human rights law.

“For example, Clark and Sikkink argue that, in human rights reports, the concept of 'political killings' has expanded from government-sponsored murder political opponents on a large scale to include problems like excessive police violence and governments’ failure to prevent political killings by other groups. On other issues, such as torture, the international legal standards for what counts as a violation has become tighter and tighter as practices have improved and activists and lawyers have pressed for further gains.”

Due to these trends, things often appear much worse than they are. The trends are rarely factored into the research and studies conducted by organizations like Freedom House or the CIRI Human Rights Data Project. When these data sets are converted into reports, they often depict a stalling or even regress of the respect for human rights which can be misleading.

Political Scientist Christopher J. Fariss conducted such a study, one which accounts for the evolving standards of what constitutes a violation of human rights in American Political Science Review, using a statistical technique called a latent variable model. What he found was that the idea that respect for human rights had stagnated or even regressed was mostly wrong.

“According to Fariss' best estimates, once we account for these underlying changes in the information available and standards applied, we see that practices on many of the human rights tracked by existing data sets have improved significantly since the early 1980s. On some issues, such as political imprisonment, Fariss finds that there hasn’t been much change. On other core concerns, however, including torture and political killing, the adjusted data show substantial gains over the past 30 years. So, the trajectory varies across issues and countries, but in most cases, the arc has continued to bend toward a better world.”

Advances in human rights are attributed to multiple causations, ones that often mutually reinforce one another. The rights revolution that followed the Second World War came about due to some elements and institutions, whether it be economic development, increased democratization, the mobilizations of civil society or international human rights law. The question to be asked is not whether international human rights have individually achieved all of its goals, but rather the question of whether it is a useful tool for human rights protection activities.