Evaluating the Impact of Human Rights Work: The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Reduction of Extrajudicial Executions in Colombia

Abstract

Introduction by Philip Alston, John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law, New York University School of Law and former United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, 2004–2010. The least well developed dimension of human rights practice and scholarship is evaluation. Human rights practitioners will often assert that their actions or interventions – ranging from mere advocacy, through attempts to embarrass or shame perpetrators, to major campaigns to ensure that prosecutions are brought and wrongdoers are punished – have been ‘successful’. But two questions always arise in response. The first is how to define success, and the second is how to demonstrate some degree of causal link between the actions of the practitioners and the response on the part of the relevant governmental or other actors who are said to have changed their attitude or conduct. Neither question is easy to answer convincingly, which explains why so few sustained and sophisticated attempts have been made at evaluation. Christian Salazar's study of the impact of the extended and intensive efforts by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Colombia to expose and at least reduce, if not eliminate, extrajudicial executions by the Colombian armed forces stands as a clear and important exception to this reluctance to engage in evaluation. In this case it is self-evaluation, which raises another standard problem in the area. Evaluation is ideally undertaken by objective and impartial external experts. But all too often the outsiders have neither the requisite expertise nor the access to enable them to do other than a superficial assessment. The insiders, for their part, generally do not have the incentive or the necessary degree of detachment, to enable them to undertake a compelling evaluation of the work with which they have been engaged. While there is generally no perfect solution to this dilemma, two principles can assist. The first is that internal and external evaluations both have an important place. Whether they reinforce, complement, or contradict one another, they nonetheless make it easier for observers to arrive at their own conclusions based on the available evidence. The second is that neither an internal nor an external evaluation is guaranteed to be convincing, and the real test lies in the strength of the methodology used, of the research undertaken, and of the degree of persuasiveness of the conclusions reached when measured against all available evidence. Seen in this light, Salazar's study is exemplary. As Director of OHCHR's largest field office in the world from 2009 to 2012 he was uniquely placed to understand and be able to situate what was going on. By adopting a carefully nuanced methodology based around a concept of causality that he describes as ‘plausible attribution’ he provides a deeply insightful analysis of the Office's impact in relation to one of the most troubling episodes in Colombia's long-running internal conflict. Even more importantly, his study arrives at a number of conclusions which must be taken very carefully into account by all those engaged in establishing and maintaining international human rights field presences in the future. Many important stakeholders who participated in the fight against extrajudicial executions in Colombia have repeatedly mentioned that the presence and the interventions of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) were crucial to their reduction. Hence, the question the present study will try to answer is: What role did OHCHR play in the reduction of extrajudicial executions and what was its impact? For the purpose of this study, ‘impact’ was defined as a plausible attribution to the work of OHCHR in Colombia of certain outcomes within the fight against extrajudicial executions. The study tries to establish these ‘plausible attributions’ based on an analysis of OHCHR's relations with the government and references to the influence of other actors. Important sources for this study are 22 interviews with key stakeholders who participated in the fight against extrajudicial executions since 2002. The interviewees were direct witnesses, close observers, or decisive actors. Thus, the words of these insiders are fundamental for the endeavor to establish OHCHR's role and impact in the process.