I. >> H  uman Rights and Indicators: Rationale and Some Concerns >> Human rights indicators - notion and rationale norms. Their coverage of the human rights standards as laid out in various instruments remains limited and often only incidental.20 Therefore, the use of performance indicators, as articulated in the literature and applied in current practice, does not in itself provide an adequate way forward for developing and encouraging the use of indicators in the implementation of human rights. Unlike performance indicators, compliance indicators in the human rights context are explicitly anchored in human rights standards. Such indicators are meant to capture the extent to which the obligations flowing from those standards are being met and are yielding outcomes that can be associated with improved enjoyment of human rights. The work undertaken in this Guide relates to the identification of indicators that can be used to promote and monitor the compliance of duty bearers with their human rights obligations (see chap. II for more details). However, in specific contexts, where programmes have been tailored to furthering the realization of human rights, or are contributing to the implementation of specific human rights obligations such as extending free primary education, programmespecific performance indicators will also help in assessing the programme’s compliance with human rights standards. 4 Indicators and benchmarks Benchmarks are predetermined values for indicators that can be based on normative or empirical considerations. For instance, an indicator for measuring nutrition adequacy can be normatively based on sociocultural factors like tastes and religious restrictions, or empirically estimated taking into account people’s work profile, and the energy and nutrient requirements of the body. Often, normative considerations are based on international or national standards (e.g., treatment of prisoners of war) or on people’s political and social aspirations. The empirical considerations are primarily related to issues of feasibility and resources. Consider, for example, the indicator “proportion of one-year-olds immunized against vaccine-preventable diseases”. Using a benchmark may require setting a specific value for the indicator, say, raising it to 90 per cent, or improving the existing coverage by 10 percentage points, so that the efforts of the implementing agency can be focused on attaining that value in the reference period. In the first case, a 90 per cent benchmark for measles inoculation could be based on a normative consideration or on an empirical observation that, at a 90 per cent vaccination rate, the probability of an epidemic drops significantly. Similarly, a 10 percentage point increase in coverage could be based on considerations of resource availability and local capacity. In the context of assessing the compliance of State parties, the use of a benchmark for an indicator strengthens their accountability by making them commit to a certain performance standard on the issue under assessment. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, in particular, has called for the setting of benchmarks to accelerate human rights implementation.21 However, the first step in arriving at a meaningful benchmark is to have a general consensus on the choice of an indicator to be used for human rights assessment. Only then can the task of setting performance benchmarks for the selected indicators be fruitful (see also chap. V, sect. A). 20. Part of the reason for this lies in the unequal time horizons: a few years in respect of development programmes and much longer for promoting and protecting human rights. Moreover, programmes by definition have to be sharply focused on one or a few objectives at a time and are unlikely to address the various facets, complexities and the large expanse of human rights standards. 21. In its general comment No. 1 (1989) on reporting by States parties, the Committee called for the setting of benchmarks with respect to quantitative indicators, such as the extent of vaccination of children and the intake of calories per person. See also its general comment No. 14 (2000) on the right to the highest attainable standard of health, paras. 57–58. 20 Human Rights Indicators