Recently I’ve become very interested in the effectiveness of human rights advocacy . I’m trying to do a somewhat more formal analysis of the effectiveness of amnesty international in particular (this is mostly because it is so well-known and because I didn’t find anything already done in the forum or elsewhere ). I’m welcoming all input into this analysis (am I missing major things? Are there other human rights advocacy groups that are much more effective? Are there better sources for measuring impact?).
In general it is really difficult due both to the decentralized organization of amnesty international (hard to estimate how much funding in total there is) and the nature of impact (I started out thinking impact would be mostly in “saved human rights activist” but I’m now thinking most impact is in lobbying to change laws and possibly acting as a deterrent via initiating investigations and lawsuits). My current thoughts are:
* I tried to use 2020 as an example year. From the global financial report 2020 it looks like amnesty spent €288M in 2020 (I don’t know if that also captures all spending by local groups)
* It is interesting that a large percentage of that goes towards fundraising.
* On the impact side I used the success stories from 2020 (German :-/ ) as well as the UA success story from July to December (did not find the earlier ones?)
* On the impact side I counted around 79 successes:
* around 18 successful UAs (extrapolated to 36 for the whole year)
* around 13 other individual successes
* around 9 law changes
* around 8 investigations
* around 4 lawsuits
* around 9 other improvements
* this doesn’t include impact through education and raising awareness.
* These are very diverse ranging from enabling access to education for 500.000 refugees in Bangladesh, over better working protection laws in Qatar to individual lawsuits against policemen.
* On the other hand if the €288M would’ve been invested into effective global health organizations they could probably save between around 72111 [using $4500 per life saved for malaria nets] to 108266 [using $3000 per life saved for vitamin A supplements] lives
If we take the 79 successes into account the question really is: “Is -on average and including indirect effects- a success for amnesty international doing as much good as saving between 913 and 1369 lives?”
And that seems still a hard question, given that law changes (and also saved human rights activists) can have long-lasting enduring impact over many people (but on the other hand might have happened anyway due to efforts by other organizations).
Recently I’ve become very interested in the effectiveness of human rights advocacy . I’m trying to do a somewhat more formal analysis of the effectiveness of amnesty international in particular (this is mostly because it is so well-known and because I didn’t find anything already done in the forum or elsewhere ). I’m welcoming all input into this analysis (am I missing major things? Are there other human rights advocacy groups that are much more effective? Are there better sources for measuring impact?).
In general it is really difficult due both to the decentralized organization of amnesty international (hard to estimate how much funding in total there is) and the nature of impact (I started out thinking impact would be mostly in “saved human rights activist” but I’m now thinking most impact is in lobbying to change laws and possibly acting as a deterrent via initiating investigations and lawsuits). My current thoughts are:
* I tried to use 2020 as an example year. From the global financial report 2020 it looks like amnesty spent €288M in 2020 (I don’t know if that also captures all spending by local groups)
* It is interesting that a large percentage of that goes towards fundraising.
* On the impact side I used the success stories from 2020 (German :-/ ) as well as the UA success story from July to December (did not find the earlier ones?)
* On the impact side I counted around 79 successes:
* around 18 successful UAs (extrapolated to 36 for the whole year)
* around 13 other individual successes
* around 9 law changes
* around 8 investigations
* around 4 lawsuits
* around 9 other improvements
* this doesn’t include impact through education and raising awareness.
* These are very diverse ranging from enabling access to education for 500.000 refugees in Bangladesh, over better working protection laws in Qatar to individual lawsuits against policemen.
* On the other hand if the €288M would’ve been invested into effective global health organizations they could probably save between around 72111 [using $4500 per life saved for malaria nets] to 108266 [using $3000 per life saved for vitamin A supplements] lives
If we take the 79 successes into account the question really is: “Is -on average and including indirect effects- a success for amnesty international doing as much good as saving between 913 and 1369 lives?”
And that seems still a hard question, given that law changes (and also saved human rights activists) can have long-lasting enduring impact over many people (but on the other hand might have happened anyway due to efforts by other organizations).