I. >> H  uman Rights and Indicators: Rationale and Some Concerns >> Indicators in the international legal framework most instances, complementary and mutually supportive. Indeed, no single indicator or category of indicator can provide a complete assessment of a given situation. They are and will always remain tools for approximating the reality, with the level of precision improving only with better information and methodologies for collecting and compiling that information. While qualitative and quasi-judicial assessments by independent human rights experts will continue to be the cornerstone of human rights assessment and monitoring, particularly for com- Box 3 plex human rights issues, there is merit in furthering the use of fact-based and quantitative indicators so as to better inform such assessments. Treaty interpretation will remain primarily a legal exercise; its quality can however be improved by securing the best possible factual basis for it. Moreover, quantitative indicators can potentially contribute to bridging the human rights discourse and the development policy discourse. Indicators used by human rights monitoring mechanisms Indicators have frequently been used in State party reports to the international human rights  monitoring mechanisms such as the United Nations treaty bodies, human rights special procedures (special rapporteurs) and the universal periodic review (UPR) of the United Nations Human Rights Council, and in the recommendations of these bodies to the State parties. Reference to statistical and other indicators concerns economic, social and cultural rights, as well as civil and political rights. For instance, the Committee against Torture recommended that Honduras should develop disaggregated indicators to monitor and document incidents of inter-prisoner violence with a view to revealing root causes and designing appropriate prevention strategies (CAT/C/HND/CO/1, para. 17). The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women commended the Lao People’s Democratic Republic for increasing considerably the proportion of women in its National Assembly, from 9.4 per cent in the third legislature (1992–1997) to 22.9 per cent in the fifth (2002–2007) (A/60/38, para. 85). The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights urged the United Kingdom to fulfil its commitment to reduce health inequalities by 10 per cent by 2010, measured by infant mortality and life expectancy at birth (E/C.12/ GBR/CO/5, para. 32). The Human Rights Committee recommended that the Czech Republic should adopt indicators and benchmarks to determine whether anti-discrimination goals have been reached (CCPR/C/ CZE/CO/2, para. 16). Similarly, the use of indicators in the context of UPR is apparent in its documentation on the human rights situation in Member States. For instance, Brazil has committed to creating a national system of human rights indicators under the UPR (A/HRC/8/27, para. 85). In its national report, Brazil assessed racial inequalities between white and Afro-descendent people using disaggregated socioeconomic statistics and pointed out the high rate of homicide in the country, particularly among children (A/HRC/WG.6/1/BRA/1, paras. 26 and 81). The compilation of United Nations information referred to the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, who had noted that homicide was the leading cause of death for persons aged 15 to 44 (A/HRC/WG.6/1/BRA/2, para. 10), and in the summary of stakeholders’ information Amnesty International noted that figures released by the prison system showed that inmate deaths as a result of homicide were six times higher than the rate observed among the general population in Brazil (A/HRC/ WG.6/1/BRA/3, para. 28). 26 Human Rights Indicators