Amazon Defense Coalition: U.S. State Department Concludes Ecuador Provides Impartial Tribunals, Says Expert Report Using CIRI

A new report based on U.S. government data and independent surveys demonstrates conclusively that Ecuador's court system ranks better than most of its neighbors in Latin America and provides impartial tribunals to litigants, clearly undermining Chevron's claims that an $18 billion judgment against it for environmental damage from the South American country cannot be enforced. READ STORY HERE and READ THE EXPERT REPORT USING CIRI HERE

Annual Data Release Date Announced

CIRI will release its annual data update on December 10, 2011, International Human Rights Day. The data for calendar year 2010 will be available at that time.

For Press/Inquiries, please contact info@humanrightsdata.org.

CIRI directors David L. Cingranelli and David L. Richards wish to thank everyone who participated in the nearly-year-long process of crafting these data. Special thanks go to (in alphabetical order): Benjamin Carbonetti (UConn), K. Chad Clay (SUNY), and Corinne Tagliarina (UConn). Special funding thanks go to the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut, and the World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators Unit.

Ethical Consumer Uses CIRI for List of Oppressive Regimes

The group Ethical Consumer has used CIRI data to compile its 2011 list of "oppressive regimes".
[View Webpage Here]
[View Full-Color Report as PDF Here (Takes a minute to load)]

Ethical Consumer's primary goal is making global businesses more sustainable through consumer pressure, and they explain the importance to this mission of identifying oppressive regimes:

Ethical Consumer was propelled into being over twenty years ago by the boycott of South Africa and the pressing need for citizens around the world to take a stand against apartheid.  We have used economic support for oppressive regimes as a barometer of corporate social responsibility ever since, and companies with operations in such countries are penalised under our rating system.  The rationale behind this is straightforward: companies benefit from the very conditions which contribute to oppression, such as harsh labour conditions, lax environmental regulations and an economic environment conducive to corruption and tax avoidance.  Furthermore, trading with a regime helps to make it financially viable.  Oppressive regimes are supported by a series of economic ties without which they would not survive.  Foreign investment is a crucial element of this.

Reliability Estimate of Judicial Independence Measure

Research Associate K. Chad Clay recently conducted an inter-rater reliability analysis of the 2008 Judicial Independence data, and the Krippendorff's r-bar statistic of reliability was 0.949.

Human Rights Measurement Conference, June 6-7

The "International Network on Quantitative Methods for Human Rights & Development" will be holding its 2nd Annual Meeting at The New School in NYC on June 6th and 7th, 2011. [View Program Here]  Among the presenters are CIRI Co-Director David L. Richards and former CIRI Research Assistant Jill Haglund.

CIRI Publication: Human Rights Quarterly

Cingranelli, David L. and David L. Richards. 2010. "The Cingranelli and Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Data Project." Human Rights Quarterly 32.2: 401-424. [LINK]

CIRI-Based Publications

We will be using the CIRI Blog to announce publications / reports that make use of the CIRI data. If you have used the CIRI data in a publication or report, please drop us a line at info@humanrightsdata.org and we will post it on our blog!