Abstract

Economic, social, and cultural rights have been a key focus in efforts to develop methods for “monitoring” human rights, the theory and practice of which has evolved significantly in recent decades. This chapter explores how activists and practitioners have harnessed these methods to analyze chronic rights deprivations. It argues that fact-finding can learn a great deal from the field of ESCR monitoring, which, by necessity, has required a more interdisciplinary outlook and has expanded to incorporate an array of quantitative approaches such as identifying indicators, scrutinizing statistics, and analyzing budgets. The chapter suggests a number of ways in which the discourse on monitoring might question or challenge the narrow conceptualization of fact-finding, in terms of its purpose and strategic objectives. It then outlines different quantitative research methods that have been used to investigate deprivations of ESCR, reflecting critically on their potential application in fact-finding.