 and welcome to Cooper Union. What's happening with human rights around the world on ThinkTech Live broadcasting from our downtown studio in Honolulu, Hawaii in Moana, New York. I'm your host, Joshua Cooper. And today we're looking at Oceania Nations embracing economic rights in the Pacific Island Forum aiming for the UN Global Goals. It's very exciting to be able to share about the Human Rights Measurement Initiative, which is an important instrument for the Pacific Island State. And the nations are exploring and examining how to achieve the 2030 Agenda of 17 Sustainable Development Goals and realizing rights for their own people. It's so exciting to be joined by two amazing advocates sharing the research that they've been doing and pointing out what's possible in the Pacific. Thank you for joining us, Susan. Thanks so much, Joshua. And thank you also, Maryam, for making time in your schedule. All right. Moving on with the mute, what's really important though as we look at it is HRMI is the first global initiative to track the human rights performance of the Pacific and around the planet that is comprehensive, collaborative, and creative metric movement to ensure the independent assessment of the rights record in the region. Could you maybe share a little bit, Susan, what goes into coming up with that important information? Well, actually, we have a couple of different types of metrics. We have metrics measuring civil and political rights performance, and we have metrics measuring economic and social rights performance. And for the civil and political rights performance, we rely on surveys from human rights experts on the economic and social rights side. However, we use a methodology called the SERF methodology that allows us to come up with indicators that enable us to compare countries on an apple to apple basis so we can look at how well a country is doing relative to other countries having basically adjusted for differences in resources and per capita income. I can't hear you, Joshua. Maryam, can you share some of the work that you've been doing on that to be able to treat this amazing HRMI for us all to be able to look at, be able to do better in promoting and protecting human rights in the Pacific? Absolutely. So in my work as a research assistant, I work mainly in the Pacific. So we get a lot of our information from our human right experts across the Pacific, obviously. And my role is to liaise with those ambassadors that we have across Oceania and the Pacific and organize things like workshops to keep people in the Pacific more informed about what HRMI is doing and to facilitate the spread of HRMI data across the Pacific. Wonderful. And what was really exciting, if we look at just last week, there was the UN High Level Political Forum where 44 countries shared about their voluntary national review on how they're doing on the 17 global goals. But also the Pacific Island Forum was meeting in BG for the first time in person for a while. And that was exciting to see in both spaces the countries of our region looking at what is possible and how we can move forward. What did you find when you did some of the research, Susan, that's most compelling about what's happening in the Pacific? One of the things we found is that there is actually tremendous opportunity for countries to do better even without any growth in per capita income. So some countries are doing very well relative to their resources. Ponga would be one of those countries. But other countries such as Papua New Guinea can do so, so much more by more effectively deploying their resources to advance human rights. And Maryam, what's an interesting finding that you saw when we look at what's going on in the Pacific? What is there something to hunk about for human rights there? I think there's a lot of different interesting aspects about the Pacific. For me personally, what I find most interesting about Hermi data is that we measure Pacific specific outcomes in our Pacific module. So within those sections, we can look at different indicators such as climate change, which is specifically affecting the Pacific. And we can see how there are some general trends there in terms of land erosion and how that's affected different rights, such as right to food and health in the Pacific as well. So those are excellent because the Pacific Island Forum 51st session had a lot of issues with people talking about what are the most compelling issues, but also the UN high level political forum. It's actually hearing torturing the halfway point and seeing how we're doing with ending poverty, zero hunger, good health and well being, quality education, gender justice, looking also like clean water and sanitation, good work and decent economic growth as well as renewable energy. So in a way, it is substantive public policy covering the major economic and social issues in a couple of areas that I think we could look at. DG, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu. What are some aspects that you find that you like to share Susan in those countries that would be compelling for people to understand and know what's happening? I think one of the things that is important to note is that there are differences in terms of the extent to which countries are meeting their sustainable development goals targets that reflect differences in capacity. So one of the things our indicators allow us to do is specify which countries are doing poorly because they simply don't have the necessary policies in place and could do much better versus which countries using their resources as effectively as they might be able to and in fact in order to meet those goals are going to require a fair amount of outside assistance. So our scores run from zero to a hundred percent and what we look at is the percent that is achievable at a country's per capita income level. So we're looking at how much of what's possible they're actually achieving and for example for Vanuatu if we do that if we look at that with regard to the income adjusted metric that's allowing us to take into account their resources they're doing quite well but if we look at it in terms of their overall performance relative to some of the best performance possible in the world norm they're not doing so well not surprisingly. So we find that in particular for relatively poor countries typically they're going to need a fair amount of outside assistance. An exception is I would say Papua New Guinea it can do so much better with its current resources that's not to say to achieve the targets it won't need additional help but basically it needs it can do so much better with better policies better insights and better deployment of the resources it has. I think we collect this data and have it so that then we can improve the public policy but also so people are informed and there's greater transparency so the analysis you're making about Papua New Guinea is very valuable and we had just conducted the universal periodic review there and also been at various conference of parties around the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change so that has a lot of valuable language. Maryam what else would you like to add regarding the points made by Susie? I think SDGs are a really useful mechanism to look at in hand with Hermi data I think they can provide information and compliment each other in quite a nice way so for example in Fiji we can see that health is quite a low-scoring indicator in Hermi data and health is also measured in the SDGs for good health and well-being and we can see that there are still a lot of major challenges remaining and what we can also get a bit more context from with Hermi data is we have our experts provide specific information so we can see that certain people were at risk due to the government limiting health services and that has in particular contributed to there being poorer health outcomes for adults in particular but I think there's obviously with every country there's always room for improvement but it's very interesting to see how the SDGs and Hermi data interact in that respect too. Very true and this year at the high level political form they're looking at SDG 4 and 5 so looking at the importance of all the education as well as gender justice but then also looking at 14 and 50 of life below land and life on water and that's the exciting part especially for Oceania because it's all interconnected maybe more than many other places and if we look at the issues and the main human rights that we can talk about we can definitely look at food and maybe can we talk about food and how we see the pacific doing related to food and nutrition because we know we have food from the land from the colo the taro the traditional crops but also from the ocean and then that's nutrition comes from the fish as well so maybe Susan you can share a bit on that. Sure in terms of the right to food we find varied performance amongst pacific countries and we have a number of different ways we can look at the right to food one way is to look at whether or not children have enough healthy food to grow well and in that regard we see lower performance than we see for example on our other sort of major focus which is on food security so typically in the pacific the problem is not so much having enough food as it is having food that provides the proper balance of nutrients that lets kids grow well now that's not to say that there aren't places where access to food is a problem where food security is a problem and Kiribati would be one example where they have considerable problems with achieving food security and even if we look at relative to the country's income we find the scores are not that great but if we look at it globally relative to best performing countries there's a lot of additional progress that needs to be made and that really brings us to an issue of climate change because climate changing is very adversely of impacting access to food and in our survey we had a number of respondents discuss what some of the problems there were so it's affecting the resiliency of crops the ocean warming is affecting the patterns of fisheries so that the fish catch yield is much less because of erosion of land people's land is actually being taken away by the sea so they do not have enough land to produce food on so this climate change is very severely impacting the right to food in the pacific country so anything you'd like that about climate change food as well i think it's interesting to note that even with the countries that are performing the best so at the top we have Tonga Samoa and at the bottom we have Papua New Guinea with both with all of those countries we can see that people certain groups are still sort of vulnerable to having their right to food put at risk so we can see that in both Papua New Guinea and in Tonga people who are living in certain geographical locations are struggling to access food so that's something that's common across a few countries particularly for people who are living outside the city or in rural areas or on specific islands as well they're struggling to access food there oh it's true when we look at what was at the forefront of the pacific island forms 50 first session it really was kicked off with youth saying you have to think about future generations but also the impact we're facing now really asking for the pacific island forms leaders to declare a climate emergency because we started talking with food but climate change really impacts so many issues that starts off first with the right of self-determination determine one's political identity and future but also pursue economic social and cultural development if one's land goes under the waves of the ocean there are so many ramifications facing people's lives the other of course being is first and foremost that right to food because no longer able as was shared by Susan to be able to grow your traditional crops that have kept you healthy and nutritious since time immemorial but then you have to import other foods that are more less healthy as we could say more leading towards indicators of help that you don't want to be leading in and so that's something as well that I think we can talk about is climate change impacts right so self-determination food also water the salinization of that but then it leads of course to health care because then that's where people's impacts are then felt and you can see changes in people's health and maybe Susan you can expand on that yes definitely we found that the in response to a question of how severely is climate change affecting human rights in your country that there are a range of scores but most of them measured at least moderately to severely to greatly and there was a just one country that said it where our respondents said it wasn't having a huge impact and that was for American Samoa but what we did find in the comments that are different respondents made was that it's impacting all human rights so the right to housing is being severely impacted of course many communities are being displaced entirely but in addition to that we're seeing the more frequent occurrence of storms and those storms are destroying a lot of houses and as you mentioned also Joshua we found a lot of emphasis placed on the fact that in many countries access to pure water for drinking is being jeopardized via climate change so it's it's not just the right to food that's being impacted it's actually all of the rights the right to education the right to health and indeed the right to a decent income one of the comments that I found quite interesting was that many people in order to try to secure themselves against the climate change are having to spend time building seawalls and that's interfering with their employment and also costing them outright resources and so this is definitely impacting their subsistence income and actually the ability to work. Mariam what else would you like to share regarding those topics? I think it's interesting to see how climate change affects all of the Pacific so obviously we have effects on housing on health and we can see that with increased natural disasters that's affecting a whole lot of different aspects so we have water insecurity as Susan mentioned there's housing, coastal degradation and families having to relocate and there are also a lot of cultural aspects that come into that as well especially for Pacific countries who are being affected more by climate change than other countries who are predominantly causing climate change. I think it's quite interesting or quite serious to know actually the impacts that it does have on the Pacific. It's an excellent point that's really at the heart of the advisory opinion being proposed by Vanuatu which of course got the support of all the other Pacific Island countries at the most recent Pacific Island forum is what they were saying is it's how is climate change impacting current and future generation but it's also a holistic perspective which is so important with what HRMI does of the civil, political and economic social and I think what you're getting at Mariam is also the depth because it's thinking of it from that perspective of looking at Fiji they've already had to move people from the traditional homeland and when they had to move then they actually had to leave their their burial grounds where they have buried their ancestors moved to higher ground so that's something that we see with climate change that most people don't understand who are not feeling it although we can say as we're meeting it's the hottest day ever in the United Kingdom so they of course recently hosted the last UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and people felt it didn't go far enough and now on this hottest day record in the UK they're getting a taste of what Tuvalu has been saying forever that today it's Tuvalu but tomorrow it's you and if we look at Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Banuatu maybe we could look and share some of the stories that came out regarding how climate change was impacting their lives and you see that as well with king tides with the waves going all the way over the countries and being unable to then live where they had been and being displaced and even an aspect of health care the hospital in some cases being flooded due to the rising oceans and the larger king tide. One of the stories that our respondents told us that I hadn't really thought of previously but it makes sense is that climate change especially due to dislocations is making groups of people more vulnerable and it's making the vulnerable even more vulnerable and one of the things that our respondents told us is that this is actually causing increased violence so we've got rising inequality as a result of these disparities and people being pushed out of their their ability to pin for themselves and then we've also gotten simply the increased vulnerability that prevents people from protecting themselves so indeed the stories of vulnerability and and the groups that are traditionally vulnerable such as GLBT groups or people with disabilities our respondents indicated that it's these people's lives that are being most adversely effective. It's a great point and I wanted to hear a Maryam because there's two things it's the it's the frequency of the storms and the severity of the storms so they're having much more frequently and then they're so severe though they're having much larger consequences on the economic and social rights as well Maryam. Absolutely so there are effects that climate change is essentially affecting a whole different range of rights and we can see that for example in Tuvalu when people were put at risk due to climate change and that was putting their homes at risk so not only was that affecting a lot of people in particular it was affecting people with disabilities because if they had to relocate they also needed to modify their homes to be more accessible which created a really large challenge and Vanuatu we also saw that climate change obviously has affected the right to food as we talked about but if we compound this with rising costs due to COVID-19 and climate change we can see how this really affects people's right to have an enjoyable and affordable life as well. It's very true and that was something that was brought up at the high level political forum of really the multiple waves of crises that we're facing there's a pollution crisis for one there's also very much a biodiversity crisis there's also the climate crisis there's definitely a financial crisis there's a cultural crisis and then we have the climate crisis so it's all those bundled in one and as Susan began that really then has a bigger impact that just builds on those that were already vulnerable such as disability rights that you raise. Susan you want to add anything along disability rights and other aspects that you've seen in the research? Our questions don't well the kinds of information that we have that deals with disability rights is actually our respondents identifying those people that are at greatest risk and then also cutting and this is from our surveys of the human rights expert and this is an issue that I think we want to investigate further because it's clear there's a big problem here and so we're hoping in the future that we're going to be able to actually focus in on groups that have disabilities and take a closer look at what's going on with them. One of the things our methodology allows us to do is to disaggregate our scores by population subgroup. Now we've done some of that and have it on our rights tracker website so that's rights tracker dot org for anybody who wants to take a look at that and that's mostly by sex though however we have on our main website as tools for advocates and our main website is human rights measurement dot org I'm hoping those are popping up in the chat list so others can see that that allows people to take a tool and for example if they have the basic information on some of the underlying indicators that we use to create our rights scores they can plug that into that tool and get the score the hermit economic and social rights scores for that particular population subgroup that is totally comparable to the other scores we have so you'd then be able to see the different and outcomes by population subgroup. How else could people use the rights tracker and these tools to then improve public policy in the pacific? I think the human rights tracker is good for a lot of reasons on one hand obviously it's independent from the government so it allows people to come and look at this data and know that it's been collected independently which allows for a bit of accountability on behalf of countries as well. I think the human rights data in particular the people at risk section is really interesting to look at just to see how certain groups are being affected so for example we were talking about disability earlier and we can see it's sort of in general that there's a sort of lack of accessibility and services in health care for some countries in the pacific so for example if we look at a country like Tonga we found that 68% of our human rights experts actually identified that people with disabilities were at risk of having their right to work violated and that they struggled to gain employment and so we can look at different countries in the pacific and see how they're performing for example with countries like the Cook Islands we can have a look at these civil and political rights which has quite high scores for the pacific but if we then move to the people at risk section we can see that those with disabilities are actually showing up at the top of the list for being at risk of having their rights violated so there are a lot of clear challenges there and a lot of different ways that we can look at countries and see that they might be doing well in some aspects and have quite a lot of room for improvement in others. That's very exciting because I also saw recently that the HRMI partnered with UPR to then be able to bring UPR Info's database and your database together to then kind of show if there have been improvements and how then to be able to measure those but then also be able to give ideas to then have initiatives that they can improve the institution. Yes indeed we're hoping more and more to get contact with not only advocacy group but also policy group and give them this tool so that they can track the performance of their countries and they can also identify those kinds of policies that are more likely to improve outcomes. So that is our hope is that we can provide that we often say we're building the infrastructure for human rights, human rights revolution and that's what we hope to do in order to make a difference and identify whether or not you're making a difference you need to have strong measures and that is what we're working to produce. Absolutely the data is essential for being able to look and then being able to understand how there have been improvements but what else really needs to be done and Miriam what are some aspects that you see in the data have a catalyst for positive social change? I think since coming to Hermia I've seen a whole variety of ways in which the data has been used so for example in the workshops that I've been running being able to actually sit down with people and show them the data about their country and how that their country is performing and what they think of it is actually really powerful because for a lot of people within the Pacific they haven't engaged with human rights work very much and don't really understand what it is and so I think it's really rewarding in that regard to be able to communicate with people all over the world about human rights and what that means for them and how they're enjoying those in their specific countries and I think especially in the Pacific due to sort of shared characteristics and similarities it also brings communities together and I think lessons can be drawn from other Pacific countries around human rights as well especially for you know leading countries when it comes to specific rights so I think yeah Hermia data really there are a lot of opportunities to learn and to substantially improve well-being across the Pacific. Well that's great in a way it's a juxtaposition for justice. It allows people to compare and see but also by looking at others they might get good ideas of how they could improve because it's similar situations in islands and then they can be inspired to then come up with new policies that then is based on what they've seen in their neighbors in the Pacific so I know we have a brief moment any closing comments Susan? I think that with our tools we're able to empower advocates to actually advocate for their human rights more effectively and ultimately the revolution we'd like to see is a revolution in human rights and we want to get rid of simply looking at income as a measure of progress and move instead to measures that put life value first that put people first looking at the quality of life for people. Excellent, Maria. I think it's just worth for anyone who's watching this to go and check out Hermie's data in the rights tracker I think people will find that there's a lot of interesting information on there and it's something that's really quite helpful and quite revolutionary so I look forward to seeing where Hermie goes. Perfect so we'll talk about education, mobilization, realization, and revolution thank you all for all the work you're doing in Oceania and we look forward to seeing where Hermie goes in the future and how the information can be used to make a greater impact in our island. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at think.kawaii.com. Mahalo.