Statistique, Développement et Droits de l‘Homme
Session C-Pa 6d
Observing the Effectiveness of Human
Development and the Aspect of Human Rights
- A Priority Aim of the Romanian Statistics
Victor DINCULESCU
Montreux, 4. – 8. 9. 2000
Statistique, Développement et Droits de l‘Homme
Observing the Effectiveness of Human Development and the
Aspect of Human Rights - A Priority Aim of the Romanian
Statistics
Victor DINCULESCU
President, National Commission for Statistics
Libertatu Avenue 16, Sector 5
Bucharest, Romania
T. + 40 1 312 48 75 F. + 40 1 312 48 73
Victord@cns.ro
ABSTRACT
Observing the Effectiveness of Human Development and the Aspect of Human Rights - A
Priority Aim of the Romanian Statistics
The Romanian official statistics count, among their basic working principles, the priority
given to ensuring the public information system by duly observing the users free access to
information. At the same time, Romanian statistics is dedicated to promoting the development and
use of official statistics as an instrument for observing and measuring human rights implementation
and human development effectiveness.
Starting from the various aspects of the human rights issue regarding the right to
development, the economic/social/cultural/political/civil rights, the statistics provides the most
reliable instruments and methods in measuring and monitoring the implementation of human rights
and in studying human development progress, respectively.
The measurement of human development level and progress is done through a set of advanced
statistical records and indicators covering the many fields of sustainable development, achieved as
a result of the experience gained over the past five years of statistical work.
The measurement and monitoring of basic human rights implementation and sustainable
human development materialized into the indicators obtained as a result of the statistical surveys
carried out by the official statistics. The domains covered through the information available mainly
concern the human resources size, the educational level, the population health condition,
manpower planning, the people’s living and welfare conditions, human security and social
protection, the development impact upon the environment, the weakening of the overall social
system, the trend in anti-social acts, the participation in public activities and the decision-taking
process, the deprivations and setbacks in human development, and obviously the population/human
development relation. Information about the civil society’s role and importance or about the
carrying into effect of governmental policy with respect to human rights observance and human
development are also made available.
Last but not least, aspects relative to the way in which general statistics respects human
rights by furthering the essential statistical principles and in particular those regarding the
autonomy, the transparency, the rule of confidentiality and data relevance are shown as well.
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RESUME
L'observation de l'efficacité du développement humain et la question des droits de la
personne: un objectif prioritaire des statistiques roumaines
Les statistiques officielles roumaines comptent, parmi leurs principes fondamentaux, la
priorité accordée à l'information du public moyennant la garantie de la liberté d'accès des
utilisateurs aux données. Par ailleurs, les responsables des statistiques roumaines visent également
à promouvoir le développement des statistiques officielles et leur emploi en tant qu'outil
d'observation et de mesure du respect des droits de la personne et de l'efficacité du développement
humain.
Se fondant sur les divers aspects de la question des droits de la personne, qu'il s'agisse de
celui au développement ou des droits économiques, sociaux, culturels et civils, les statistiques
constituent des instruments et des méthodes particulièrement fiables de mesure et de surveillance
du respect des droits de la personne et d'étude du progrès du développement humain.
La mesure du niveau de développement humain et des progrès en la matière a lieu au moyen
d'un ensemble de dossiers et d'indicateurs statistiques hautement élaborés et qui couvrent les
nombreux aspects du développement soutenable: résultat de l'expérience accumulée au cours des
cinq dernières années consacrées au travail statistique.
La mesure et la surveillance du respect des droits de la personne ainsi que d'un
développement humain soutenable se sont concrétisées sous forme des indicateurs obtenus en tant
que résultats des enquêtes statistiques menées par les services officiels spécialisés. Les domaines
visés par les informations disponibles concernent essentiellement l'entité des ressources humaines,
le niveau d'instruction, les conditions sanitaires de la population, le planning de l'emploi de la
main-d'oeuvre, les conditions de vie et le bien-être des gens, la sécurité humaine et la protection
sociale, l'impact du développement sur l'environnement, l'affaiblissement du système social global,
la diffusion croissante des actes antisociaux, la participation aux activités publiques et les
processus de prise des décisions, les déficits et les échecs en matière de développement humain
ainsi que, bien entendu, les rapports entre population et développement humain, les informations
sur le rôle et l'importance de la société civile, et la mise en oeuvre des politiques gouvernementales
en matière de respect des droits de la personne et de développement humain.
Enfin, l'article traite également des aspects relatifs au rôle joué par les statistiques dans le
domaine du respect des droits de la personne au niveau des principes essentiels sur lesquelles elles
se fondent, en particulier ceux de l'autonomie, de la transparence, de la confidentialité et de
l'importance des données concernées.
1. Statistics and Human Development Measurement
The universal observance of human rights is a priority concern for all nations. Over the past
decades, the preoccupation’s of the international community in this respect increasingly focused on
the understanding and presentation of the interrelationship between population, human rights and
the achievement of the development goals. As a matter of fact, it is unanimously acknowledged that
the right to development is an universal and indivisible right, integrate part of people’s essential
rights and that human beings are the core of concerns for a sustainable development. The relevant
concepts included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulate the recognition of people
as equals before the law, the right to found a family, the right to work and to receive an equal pay to
equal work, the right to education, to social security, to health and to an adequate standard of living.
This is the reason why the sustainable development concept is considered to be a means of
providing an equitable welfare level distributed among present and future generations. The
development targets take into account the interactions between people, resources and environment
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to ensure a sustainable Human Development. It is consequently obvious that the statistics plays a
major role not only in measuring and diagnosing the human development level reached by a certain
country but also in the monitoring and assessment of the implementation of the socio-economic
rights contributing to an appropriate human development.
The official statistics has among its priority principles the assurance of an impartial society
information system by observing the free access of all citizens and users to public information. At
the same time, public statistics promotes, within such principles, the development and use of the
statistics and indicators produced as an observation and measurement tool in the implementation of
human rights in agreement with effective national legislation, as well as the human development
efficiency. The statistical information made available helps to characterise the human development
process and its basic components like productivity, equity, sustainability, empowerment.
One main statistical purpose in achieving such key objectives is to further the dialogue and
multidisciplinary co-operation among suppliers, producers and users of official statistics, first of all
with the decision makers and the civil society representatives in order to work out suitable policies
and to monitor and evaluate the respect for human rights which are essential to asure the sustainable
development.
If one takes into account the principles of indivisibility and interdependence of the various
forms of human rights regarding the right to development, socio-economic, cultural, political and
civil rights, then the statistics is meant to choose the most reliable mechanisms and methods in
monitoring and evaluating the implementation and observance of human rights within the human
development process. This priority statistical target is to be found in the ways in which it provides
the measurement of human development level and the monitoring of the implementation of the
policies aiming to achieve a sustainable human development. To do this, a sophisticated system of
statistics and indicators covering the many fields of human development and characterising the
development in time of the process as such was specifically set up.
This system of indicators was made up with due attention paid to the fact that the economic
support of human development is the sustainable development as an essential means to ensure wellbeing equitably shared by all society members. All the same, one cannot omit the issues specific to
the social life, human relations and malfunctions occurring in the assurance of social cohesion,
including the non-discrimination in public life and decision-making participation.
The practice of the Romanian official statistics proves the necessity to develop a system of
indicators characteristic of human development and associated rights observance, requiring constant
improvement in order to fill some gaps or to add information from new fields related to such
development.
The traditional domains covered through the available information concern the human
resources size, the educational level, the population’s health condition, the work resources
employment, the living conditions, the human security, the social security and protection, the
relationship between human development and economic development, the relationship between
human development and environment, but equally important are the aspects related to the
participation in public life and decision-making, the role and involvement of NGO’s, the social
system weakening phenomena and the increase of deviant behaviour, as well as the revelation of the
privations and inconsistencies appearing in human development.
2. Priority Statistical Tasks in Observing and Evaluating the Human Development Level
The statistical system characterising the human development level and evolution comprises a
multitude of indicators related to the target fields of development expressed in a variety of
computation forms. Basically, the statistical indicators are expressed not only in absolute values but
also in relative indicators (expressing the structure, the dynamics, the intensity, the ratio), in
measures of Central tendency (average, median, module), as a variation indicator (dispersion,
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skewness) or in correlation indicators and indices. As a rule, they are presented in a quantitative
form, using also graphic techniques.
The design of the human development statistical indicators should also take into account the
approach domains as they determine the information presentation manner, which may be quite
large. For example the principles of equal opportunities are presented compared to those connected
with the economic development or the access to education and health care, the right to adequate and
to a decent living standard, the poverty alleviation or those relative to the production capacity and
the right to political and civil freedoms. Thus hereinafter I shall try to make a synthetic presentation
of the range of information used to observe and assess the human development dimensions, the
measurement and monitoring of the implementation process and the associated effects relative to
the human rights policies and measures applied, respectively.
2.1 Human Resources Assessment
The trends in the human resources size and the intervened structural changes, as well as the
human cohabitation forms can be obtained through indicators referring to the dynamics and
structure of the population and families and also through the trends in the demographic phenomena.
The tendencies in population’s numerical evolution and structures allow us to underline the changes
occurred in the total population or in certain population groups (women - men, young ones - adults old people, population groups according to their ethnic or confessional belonging), in the dynamics
of populations (in time and in space) and in the age and marital status structure. Relevant to the
field is the demographic ageing process and its related socio-economic consequences.
The demographic situation is presented through the main indicators relative to fertilityand
mortality, to internal and international migration or the population’s evolution as consequence of
the size of the total/natural/migratory increase. The demographic rates and ratios are represented by
the fertility/abortion rates and, the proportions of live born by rank, the underweight ones or those
born the wedlock. The way of setting up a family and its stability, as well as the living arrangements
forms (within or outside the households) is shown by the nuptiality and divorciality and by the
structure of households and families, where the consensual arrangements, the single-parental
families and the single persons living alone, acquired a peculiar importance.
Such information refer to a number of human rights, among which the right to life and
personal security, the right to conclude a marriage and to found a family, the right to a health,
reproductive and the observance of specific children’s, women’s and family rights.
2.2 Right to Education
As concerns the right to education, a wide range of statistical indicators refer to equal
opportunities in knowledge acquirement and educational level improvement and to a complete
development of the human resources by ensuring the human capital formation directed to the full
development of human dignity and potential.
Based on evaluating the human capital stock and quality and on the population structure
according to educational level, also important are the indicators following the educational process
development, including the size and structure of the school population, school enrolment ratio and
educational quality respectively. Special stress should be paid on following the higher education
access (high school, university), the school graduation and abandon rates, the ratio teaching
staff/trained school population or the measures meant to reduce the illiteracy rate, particularly
among the young and teenage population.
Particular attention is given to the education being a key element to a sustainable
development, allowing the human resources integration in society life, which also represents an
essential factor towards an improvement in the welfare through manpower employment.
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2.3 Health
Regardless of the economic development level of a society, special attention should be paid to
the three essential sides of human development, namely the provision of a long and healthy life
through acquisition of the required information and knowledge and a guaranteed access to the
necessary resources and quality health services, to have a decent living standard and to enjoy the
best possible physical and mental health standard.
Therefore, in health one should take all appropriate measures to ensure, based on the equality
among sexes, a universal unrestricted access to health care services including those related to family
planning and sexual health.
The statistical indicators characterising the development in the population’s health condition
and the access to quality health services comprise a variety of information relative to life
expectancy at birth and various ages, the morbidity level and evolution the prevalence and
incidence of illnesses), the evolution of general and differential mortality, mainly the
infantile/juvenile/maternal one. It is also important to show the coverage of the national health
system, the provision of adequate health services and medical - care quality including capacity
health units of their activity (consultations and treatments), the assurance of a suitable ratio between
medical staff (doctors and nurses) and the attended population. Useful information is needed with
respect to reproductive health and sexual problems among which the family planning, the abortion
rate, the contraception prevalence rates and the extent of the sexually transmitted diseases, HIV and
AIDS included. The reproductive rights including the basic right of individuals and couples decide
to freely and responsibly on the desired number and spacing of their children, as well as on the right
to a free and healthy sex life should also be monitored.
2.4 Right to Work
One important field of human development is that concerning the labour resources and the
employment of the available human capital. The participation rates in the socio-economic activities
and the available opportunities on the labour market allow the turning into account by the human
resources of the potential production capacities with a view to ensure the human needs to reach a
satisfactory welfare standard (decent food/housing/old age/living conditions).
Thus, besides characterising the evolution of the labour resources volume and structure, the
specific statistical indicators follow the use of the existing labour force, the employment rate, the
labour cost, the jobs availability on the labour market and the equal competition.
In addition to the activity and employment rates, differentiated by age/gender/educational
pattern, also important are the statistics on under - and unemployment issues. In a dynamic view,
equally important are the evolution of the labour renewal rate or the economic dependency one
within the community/family, the size and proportions of the expenses required for the
employment/reconversion schemes and the creation of new jobs. Lately and in the long run there
appeared aspects that should be followed, especially as regards the evolution and causes of under
employment, the ratio between paid and unpaid labour or the evolution of the “non-standard”
workplaces (temporary, seasonal, part time or on own account on a discontinued basis), which do
not provide an adequate employment of the existing labour force.
2.5 Conditions of Life
The human development is also organically dependent upon the way in which people can
provide a decent living standard and a suitable existence for themselves. The representation and
evaluation of the people’s living conditions or those regarding the inequalities and poverty are done
through statistical indicators assessing the value, the size and the structure of the household incomes
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or of the employed/unoccupied population. According to the professional status, the size and
structure of the population’s actual incomes may also serve to characterise the disparities existing in
the incomes structure or in their polarisation process affecting the social cohesion. Equally
important is to strengthen the quality of information in order to ensure time comparability of the
population’s incomes and expenditures structure, expressed in real values (real
income/wages/pension). The disparities in the households consumption level, also indicating the
inequality in income distribution are highly relevant for human poverty dimensions. The poverty
size and trends and the amount of people living below the absolute or relative poverty threshold
enable a correct accurate settlement for the strategy of the poverty reduction policy mainly oriented
toward the marginal and vulnerable groups. Other important aspects regarding this vast and
complex human development field refer to the status and the achievement of comfortable living
conditions. Thus, specific indicators can characterise the human consumption expressed either
through average annual consumption’s of food (quantitatively or in calories and nutrients), the
consumption level, the provision of products and services necessary for a decent living (including
housing services) socio-cultural ones and also specific elements evaluating the population’s housing
conditions type of dwellings, their size/ endowment/occupancy a.s.o.).
In a so complex field as the living arrangements, an extended attention should be given to
monitoring and assessing the implementation of the internationally-adopted socio-economic rights
like the European Social Chart, recognised by all the Council of Europe member countries.
2.6 Social Issues
The whole human development issues should not neglect the promoted social policies whose
role is crucial in solving specific social aspects related to assure social security benefits for all.
Over the past transition period in Romania, special attention has given to minimising the
social costs of the economic reform and the transition to a market economy. In this respect, just like
in other transition countries, the decision makers focused their attention on the extension of poverty
process in order to decrease the disparities and a higher social polarisation (particularly as concerns
the revenues or the private property) or the increasing social deviations (antisocial behaviour, social
inequities, a.s.o.).
The statistical indicators expressing the development in public expenditure for social
protection purposes (education, health, culture, environment, housing) were included among those
indicating the evaluation of the social security system.
Attention was also given to assessing the effects of the applied legislative and political
measures in the social protection field. In particular, detailed information were provided with
respect to the pension and social security system, the unemployed protection and reinsertion plan
and the social assistance system based on social solidarity, respectively.
Particularly relevant proved to be the statistics stressing the dynamics and proportion of the
expenditures for social protection and social services versus the GDP, the overall population
consumption or within the national public budget. Naturally, the importance of social expenses
within the population’s incomes, as well as the insurance of a minimum equitable consumption and
of a decent living standard was also emphasised. The characterising based on statistical data of the
poverty extent, which undermines the right to human development and well-being, provides the
conditions necessary to adopt viable strategies and poverty-reduction policies, having in mind that
the poverty process and other associated variables such as the unemployment, the malnutrition, the
illiteracy, the health condition, the social inequities obviously affect the human development
evolution.
2.7 Public Participation
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The assessment of the human development level and evolution together with the measurement
of human rights observance also depend on other domains for which different information was
provided through the system of statistical indicators. I shall attempt hereinafter to present some of
them, the most relevant to our approach.
One such field is the participation in public life and decision-making, indicative of the way in
which non-discrimination in public life, irrespective of nationality, language, faith, sex, opinion,
political affiliation, social origin and equality of all citizens before the law and public authority are
observed.
The unrestricted participation in public life and decision-making (legislative, executive, socioeconomic) must be assured by opposing any kind of discrimination, differentiation, exclusions or
restrictions.
As to the social equity and stability it is important to define the role and involvement of the
NGO’s and of the partnership and co-operation with the public administration and public
institutions. One should follow the mentalities and behaviour patterns of people in community, the
dimensions of the deviant behaviour included. Special attention should be attached to the
weakening of the social system due to the spreading of the deviant behaviour and antisocial deeds.
It is required based on relevant information the size of the conflicting / non-conflicting
character of the social relations hips (political, economic, ethnic), as any unbalance influences upon
social stability.
Another field of interest is the perception of the government legitimacy, the way in which the
authorities promote policies meant to strengthen the social dialogue and social cohesion. Also
necessary are the information about the implementation of actions aiming towards the insurance of
the social equity and stability.
2.8 Inequalities
The general statistical concerns referring to the evaluation of the human development
evolution should necessarily include indicators describing the existent privation level in human
development, the inequities and the inequalities at the family and community level. Among the
large range of available indicators - although one appreciates that for some of them the information
is still not sufficient - we shall remind those dealing with the equal rights between genders, as well
as with the women’s empowerment. To which the minority rights may be added. One should also
remember the privations in living conditions and the role of the state/decision makers in workingout the tools capable of providing a suitable well-being.
One cannot possibly leave aside the malfunctions present at the family level, expressed
through aspects related to the family nucleus, broken-up families, inter-family violence, vagrant
children or men’s responsibility in the family and the respect of women’s and children’s rights.
Finally, in our country there persist disparities at the human development level and between the
living conditions in the urban and rural areas, deprivations which should be surpassed through
appropriate programmes and policies.
3. Statistics and Respect of Human Rights
During the past decades, the official statistics acquired new dimensions, both on an
international and national level. The statistics is increasingly involved in the decision-making
process, not only as an information provider but also by implicitly participating in the working-out,
of the human development strategies and programmes but also in the monitoring and evaluation of
the implementation results in various fields of the economic, social and political life.
Starting from the principle that the statistical information represents an essential base in
successfully implementing the development strategy in the socio-economic and environment
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protection fields, the official statistics is asked to strive toward becoming an indispensable tool in
the information system of the democratic society by providing to every user available data in a
perfectly impartial way, in order to guarantee the free access to public information for all citizens.
Equally important is a reliable statistical information system for all the political decision
makers, on a national or local level, in the governmental/legislative/political decision-making
process in order to observe the principle “good policies need reliable statistics”.
To the statisticians it is quite obvious that the confidence of the public and of all statistical
information users can only be acquired by respecting the values and principles the official statistics
promoted to guarantee the right to information.
The international statistical community included to this purpose in the fundamental principles
of the official statistics activity, among others, the following :
a. the principle of autonomy to ensure and disseminate the statistical data and information
in an impartial and independent way with no interventions of any kind and from any
position of interest of the government, the politicians, the trade and employers unions,
minority groups and other organisations or persons. Actually, I trust that in our statistical
work we should be guided by a steady concern for impartiality according to which “the
statistics should be political relevant but not politically directed“.
b. the principle of transparency in conformity with which the statistics is bound to observe
and assure the rights of the providers and users of statistical information and also of other
categories of individual or judicial persons interested in having access to the statistical
legislation, purposes, methods and survey results, respectively. Under such circumstances,
it appears that the statistics should guarantee through the performed activity not only the
access to the statistical information produced but also the taking of suitable measures, so
that the survey programmes should be able to provide information for the measurement of
human rights observance, as well as for the diagnosis of the human development size on
national level. The transparency may be ensured through any data editing process of the
available information, provided in terms that the official statistics has the necessary
resources and capacity.
c. the principle of confidentiality in accordance to which covering the whole statistical work
from registration to dissemination and publication respectively, the protection of the data
and information referring to individual statistical subjects (individual and judicial persons)
is fully ensured. This guarantees the observance by official statistics of the fundamental
rights and freedoms, the right to a private life and to privacy in particular, through all the
stages of statistical information processing.
d. the principle of relevance and that of observing the professional ethics rules through the
assurance of a full objectiveness, the impartiality and the respect for the professional
integrity. In this respect, the statistics is preoccupied with the accessibility, scientific
consistency, quality of data and completeness of the information made available to the
users.
I would also like to mention that the Romanian statistics constantly follows the good practices
in official statistics as promoted by the international community.
The associated measures adopted until now are concerned with the production of reliable,
consistent and relevant statistics, the provision of an easy access for the users, the correctness of the
estimations and the suitable documentation of the employed definitions and methods based on
common methodological concepts, classifications and standards in line with the international ones.
It is worth mentioning that due to the fact that the statistics must measure and indicate the real
human development level and the respect of human rights, one of the current preoccupation and a
future challenge too being the necessity that the official statistics should not only complexly
describe the socio-economic phenomena and processes but also contribute to a larger extent to the
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understanding of the concerned phenomena. Without a proper understanding of such factors it is
very difficult to define policies and programmes meant to correctly accomplish the desired
objectives. This is why the official statistics is required to further the carrying-out of complex socioeconomic analyses.
Thus it may contribute to the monitoring and evaluation of the socio-economic rights
implementation in order to have a sustainable human development.
In the end, I should like to draw to the attention of the international community of official
statisticians on the necessity to promote initiatives aiming at a larger co-operation in designing a
system of international statistics and indicators conceptually and methodologically comparable,
targeting the monitoring and assessment of the way the UN-established human rights are observed.
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