OPERA
OPERA is a simple, yet comprehensive framework that activists and researchers can use to more systematically analyze whether governments are meeting their economic and social rights obligations. OPERA groups together relevant obligations into four dimensions: Outcomes, Policy Efforts, Resources, and Assessment.
It centers a problem facing a particular community or communities and then zooms out to analyze its underlying causes. Where we see problematic outcomes, how have the government’s action (or inaction) affected them? How has the use of resources affected that action? In light of the broader context, is the government responsible for the problem? This helps us understand not just what’s happening, but why.
As well as identifying what questions need to be answered under each of these dimensions, OPERA also suggests tools and techniques for how to answer them. But, importantly, these can be interchanged and adapted to different contexts. Data is a key tool. By illuminating trends and patterns, it helps to debunk myths, reveal new insights and, ultimately, expose systemic injustices. This, in turn, helps to connect the problems communities are facing back to the action or inaction of the government—building a stronger case that it amounts to a human rights violation.
OPERA provides a guiding lens for CESR's work. We’ve also accompanied partners within and beyond the human rights field as they’ve used it to inspire action for change—from local grassroots activists to international organizations. OPERA is grounded in, and enriched by, these experiences. If you’d like to find out more about this work, see our resources below and get in touch with our team.
Showing 31 to 55 of 55 results

Assessing Austerity: Tools for preventing another Lost Decade for human rights
Setting out a methodological framework for assessing and addressing the human rights impacts of fiscal consolidation.

The Opera Framework
CESR has developed a simple, yet comprehensive four-step framework to analyze various aspects of the obligation to fulfill 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.

Kenya: Using OPERA to ensure UN recommendations are met
While UN human rights bodies are issuing stronger recommendations on ESCR, CESR works with national partners around the world to build up implementation tracking mechanisms.

Methodological choices in human rights research are political, not just technical
Media: The methods human rights researchers and advocates use determine what injustices we see and prioritize, making methodology far more than just a technical choice.

How Data Is Helping in the Struggle for the Right to Education in South Africa
Media: CESR's Allison Corkery writes in Open Society Foundations Voices blog about using OPERA tool with Legal Resources Centre to identify indicators and analyze data for tracking implementation in South African education rights case.

How Data Is Helping in the Struggle for the Right to Education in South Africa
CESR's Allison Corkery writes in Open Society Foundations Voices blog about using OPERA tool with Legal Resources Centre to identify indicators and analyze data for tracking implementation on South African education rights case.
New ESCR tools and methodologies introduced to Buenos Aires Public Defender
In November, CESR's Sergio Chaparro participated in a workshop with the Ministerio Público de la Defensa of Buenos Aires about how to use the OPERA framework in the department's daily work.

OPERA in South Africa: How Strategic Litigation + Strong Data = Better Implementation
In a new case study, CESR and the Legal Resources Centre reflect on a joint project piloting the use of the OPERA framework to analyze implementation in a case on the right to education in South Africa.

OPERA in Practice: Implementation of Strategic Litigation in South Africa
CESR's OPERA framework tracks South African court's mandate on education rights.

"OPERA-tionalizing" rights in Scotland’s new social security law
A workshop in Scotland asked how human rights can help design policies that tackle economic inequality and social exclusion.
OPERA in Practice: case studies applying CESR's monitoring framework
CESR presents four new case studies – from Kenya, Ireland, Angola, and Egypt – illustrating some of the diverse ways our OPERA Framework for monitoring economic and social rights can be applied.

Defending Dignity: Introduction
CESR and the Asia Pacific Forum (APF) present a new manual - ‘Defending Dignity’ - designed to strengthen the role of National Human Rights Institutions in monitoring and enforcing economic, social and cultural rights. The manual is complemented by a series of motion graphics and explanatory videos.This introduction unpacks the question of what is monitoring, and what should it mean for NHRIs getting to grips with economic, social and cultural rights. It covers a wide range of activities that NHRIs commonly undertake as part of their mandated functions.

Defending Dignity Part I: Defining the issues
CESR and the Asia Pacific Forum (APF) present a new manual - ‘Defending Dignity’ - designed to strengthen the role of National Human Rights Institutions in monitoring and enforcing economic, social and cultural rights. The manual is complemented by a series of motion graphics and explanatory videos. This section explains how a human rights-based approach can be used to frame questions about poverty and socio-economic deprivation in a way that holds the relevant actors responsible for human rights violations.

Defending Dignity Part III: Assessing resources
CESR and the Asia-Pacific Forum (APF) present a new manual - ‘Defending Dignity’ - designed to strengthen the role of National Human Rights Institutions in monitoring and enforcing economic, social and cultural rights. The manual is complemented by a series of motion graphics combined with explanatory videos. This section tackles the often-challenging issue of assessing resources. It introduces the policy areas that are relevant to consider when assessing resources, before showing how budget analysis approaches can be used to investigate how resources are allocated, generated and spent.

Defending Dignity Part II: Collecting and analyzing data
CESR and the Asia Pacific Forum (APF) present a new manual - ‘Defending Dignity’ - designed to strengthen the role of National Human Rights Institutions in monitoring and enforcing economic, social and cultural rights. The manual is complemented by a series of motion graphics and explanatory videos. Part II of the manual tackles collecting and analysing data. After defining the right question to ask, the next step is to collect the data that can help answer that question.

Defending Dignity Part IV: Communicating findings
CESR and the Asia Pacific Forum (APF) present a new manual - ‘Defending Dignity’ - designed to strengthen the role of National Human Rights Institutions in monitoring and enforcing economic, social and cultural rights. The manual is complemented by a series of motion graphics combined with explanatory videos. This final section addresses what will be the most tangible “output” of any monitoring activity - the report – examining the factors that will make it most compelling and so contribute to effective advocacy.

South Africa: court orders task team to tackle school furniture saga
CESR's partners in South Africa have secured a significant breakthrough after a court ordered the Minister of Basic Education to address furniture shortages in Eastern Cape schools.

Transforming fact-finding to realize economic and social rights
New book includes a chapter by Allison Corkery, Director of CESR’s Rights Claiming and Accountability Program, on fact-finding methodologies and the multidimensional nature of chronic deprivations.

Assessing public policies from a human rights perspective: case study Guatemala
This case study explains how the OPERA methodology was deployed to to assess Guatemala’s compliance with its human rights commitments.

New tools for old problems: closing the accountability gap in Egypt
Allison Corkery on the next phased of our ongoing collaboration with Egyptian human rights defenders.

OPERA in the Occupied Territories
CESR is working closely with Palestine's Independent Commission on Human Rights to support its efforts protect economic and social rights.

The 'OPERA' Framework: meeting the challenge of economic and social rights monitoring
In order to hold governments to account for their obligation to fulfill economic, social and cultural rights (ESC rights), advocates and activists need practical tools to monitor their conduct, evaluating it against multifaceted principles such as progressive realization, minimum core obligations, maximum available resources and non-discrimination

Strengthening protection of economic and social rights in Kenya
CESR has been supporting KNCHR pioneering work on economic and social rights.

Event: Enforcing Economic, Social and Cultural Rights - The Hope and Challenge of the Optional Protocol
Once operational, this new international mechanism will provide victims of economic, social and cultural rights violations who are not able to get an effective remedy in their domestic legal system with tangible legal options for redress.
Publications, Reports & Briefings
The Price of Gold: Gold Mining & Human Rights in Honduras
2001 report on a CESR investigation to the current operation of the gold mining industry in Honduras since the passage of the General Mining Law in November 1998.