"A guiding lens for CESR's national enforcement work, the OPERA framework allows an assessment that triangulates outcomes, policies and resources to provide a much fuller picture of what a state is doing to promote the realization of specific rights. Importantly, it traces economic and social deprivations and disparities back to the actions or omissions of the state, to make the case that they constitute an injustice and a violation of human rights."
This infographic illustrates the OPERA framework. This framework is for monitoring economic, social and cultural rights fulfilment and consists of four levels of analysis: outcomes, policy efforts, resources and assessment. The infographic lays out specific benchmarks and for what is measured by each level of analysis and how each concept is to be measured
“This paper presents a practical framework for integrating different tools and techniques in order to provide a more comprehensive assessment of how public policies comply with the obligation to fulfill ESC rights. The OPERA framework (so called because it triangulates Outcomes, Policy Efforts and Resources to make an overall Assessment) articulates relevant human rights standards and principles to take into account when monitoring ESC rights fulfillment and offers practical guidance on which tools and techniques might be employed to evaluate them. These range from simple descriptive statistics that summarize data to more complex fiscal policy and budget analysis that assess the availability and allocation of resources. By making explicit this crucial link between the various human rights standards and principles that underpin the obligation to fulfill and the different assessment methods available to monitor them, the framework enables a systematic approach to building evidence of failures to fulfill ESC rights”
This report is a “methodological case study on the use of available resources to realize economic, social and cultural rights in Guatemala…To assess Guatemala’s compliance with its development and human rights commitments, the study adopted a multidisciplinary approach, combining a range of quantitative and qualitative research techniques drawn from the fields of human rights law, public policy analysis and development economics. This paper provides a step-by-step explanation of the methodological approach designed for the “Rights or Privileges” project, in order to illustrate the application of CESR’s analytical framework OPERA (so called because it triangulates evidence gathered on Outcomes, Policy Efforts and Resources to make an overall Assessment)”
This section of the Center for Economic and Social rights’ website presents information about the OPERA framework. The centre “developed a simple, yet comprehensive four-step framework to analyse various aspects of the obligation to fulfil economic and social rights. Adopting the acronym OPERA, the framework incorporates different measures for specific human rights principles and standards, by framing them around four levels of analysis: Outcomes, Policy Efforts, Resources and Assessment”
