The Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI) provides annual scores to show how well countries are meeting their human rights obligations and treating their people as well as they can.

This paper looks at economic and social rights enjoyment in Pacific countries, i.e., to what extent are people able to enjoy their rights to education, food, health, housing, and work. It looks at ways of expanding the number of countries and rights the Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI) can provide scores for, given gaps in the available data.

Results:

• The scores show that there are opportunities to substantially improve economic and social rights enjoyment in the Pacific, even without per capita income growth. 

• The range in economic and social rights performance scores observed across the Pacific countries indicates there is considerable scope for countries to learn from each other about what approaches hold promise. Countries scoring poorly on one right can look to the policies and structures in place that other countries have used to achieve good scores on the same right.