Who Will Be Accountable?

                This post is a summary of the book with the title above, published at    https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/WhoWillBeAccountable_summary_en.pdf

               The Millennium Development Goals embodies on unprecedented international consensus on poverty reduction as a shared global enterprise, framed around a limited set of commitments to which countries would be held accountable. By setting quantifiable, time-bound targets around a range of indicators, they instilled a shared sense of urgency and provide a statistical basis for reliably  tracking progress across countries. The goals, thereby, held promise as an instrument of accountability and an incentive to action. However, the experience of the past 12 years indicates that their pledge of accountability has been more rhetorical than real. Accountability has been undermined by a lack of clarity about who should be responsible to whom and for what. The weakness of the goals' monitoring and reporting mechanisms has rendered these declaratory political commitments difficult to enforce. The world is weary of broken promises. Future commitments will have litle credibility, and are unlikely to be implemented, unless they are backed by effective accountability mechanisms at every level and translated into tangible results in people's lives. Aligning goals more explicity with the binding obligations States already have under international human rights treaties is not only a legal imperative. It can also strengthen incentives to improve policymaking and implementation. In line with these recommendations, the post-2015 agenda must include a strong accountability framework anchored in human rights standards and reinforce by human rights mechanisms. It will mean ensuring mechanisms are in place to ensure that relevant institutions are answerable for their commitments and subject to enforceability where delivery is falling. And it will mean linking accountability assessments to existing international human rights mechanisms, like the United Nations treaty bodies. Accountability is a cornerstone of the human rights framework, itself a system of norms that govern the relationship between "duty bearers" in authority and "rights holders" affected by their actions. Effort to increase accountability in the post-2015 agenda can draw on human rights norms and mechanisms to strengthen the three dimensions of accountability. Accountability has a corrective function, making it possible to address individual or collective grievances, and sanction wrongdoing by the institutions responsible. However, accountability also has a preventive function, helping to determine which aspects of policy or service delivery are working, so they can be built on, and which aspects need to be adjusted. Accountability mechanisms can help identify systemic failures that need to be overcome in order to make policymaking more effective and responsive. The bond of accountability between state and citizen lies at the centre of an elaborate web of interrelated responsibilities. A vast number of national institutions with distinct responsibilities defined in domestic statutes and administrative law, are responsible and accountable for the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of development programmes and their impact on human rights. Accountability is primarily ensured at the national level. A range of institutions and machanisms exist that can and have been used to hold decision makers answerable for their commitments. These include political accountability mechanisms, such as parliamentary committees, independent oversight bodies, including human rights commissions and ombuds offices. When individuals are adversely affected, mechanisms should enable them to enforce their claim against those in authority and seek appropriate redress if their rights have been violated. Judicial mechanisms are key in this regard. Despite the obstacle that people can face in accessing justice through the courts, litigation can be an important avenue of accountability, whose function is preventive as well as corrective. Beyond the courts, other administrative mechanisms may perform quasi-judicial functions, providing alternative dispute resolution procedures for human rights violations. International accountability mechanisms generally have a supervisory or oversight role, rather than an enforcement function. Yet they can play an important role in fostering responsibility, for example by agreeing targets and benchmarks that can be applied domestically. They can also strengthen answerability, for example, by scrutinizing whether adequate national mechanisms of redress exist. They offer additional forums for raising and negotiating grievances, and are particularly helpful to individuals whose opinions are disregarded by their own governments. International human rights mechanisms such as the universal periodic review of the United Nations Human Rights Council, should be enabled to take more consistent account of monitoring and reporting processes. As well as focusing on the conduct of national actors in their own countries, international accountability mechanisms also have a role to play in ensuring the accountability of those operating at the global level, including non-state actors, which are playing an increasingly influential role. Human rights should be the baseline and metric for assessment of domestic and international policy coherence. There is much to be done. A new global deal is needed. Its ultimate objective should be to realize the full range of rights that all human beings should enjoy in order to live a life with dignity.