Development of an UNDRIP Compliance Assessment Tool: How a Performance Framework Could Improve State Compliance

Improving state compliance with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) can be supported by monitoring and measurement. Current approaches to monitoring state compliance with the UNDRIP are qualitative and non-standardized, which limits comparability across time and across geopolitical lines. In this article, we introduce a novel approach to monitoring compliance with the UNDRIP and human rights more generally. This work highlights the potential advantages of using a performance improvement framework to clearly identify gaps in compliance, monitor state compliance with the Declaration over time, and effectively assess and compare state compliance. We describe the development of a standardized UNDRIP compliance assessment tool and report the process and findings of a pilot test of the tool. The pilot assessment utilized the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples' (SRRIP; Anaya, 2014) findings on the situation of Indigenous Peoples in Canada in three thematic areas: (a) self-government and self-governance; (b) consultation and free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC); and (c) land and natural resources. While insufficient for a fulsome assessment of Canada’s compliance with the UNDRIP, we restricted ourselves to the report for two reasons: first, to test the applicability of the tool for quantifying qualitative data; and, second, to evaluate the degree to which the UN monitoring mechanism for Indigenous rights adheres to the Declaration’s Articles for monitoring and reporting. We discuss implications and opportunities for improving human rights monitoring and state implementation efforts.