7 takeaways: Is evaluation key to realizing universal human rights?

On December 10, 2025, Eval4Action marked Human Rights Day with a pivotal Future of Evaluation Dialogue, asking: "Is evaluation key to realizing universal human rights?" The dialogue firmly established that evaluation is not just helpful but essential, even existential, to realizing human rights, especially in times of global setbacks where conflicts, and shrinking civic space are reversing decades of progress.

The discussion provided concrete pathways and principles for elevating the human rights-based approach (HRBA) in evaluation by systematically addressing institutional biases and empowering rights-holders. The dialogue also emphasized the critical role of technology and youth in co-creating evaluative evidence, stressing that both must be leveraged responsibly to democratize data and challenge the status quo.

Seven quick takeaways from the dialogue

1. Evaluation must be guided by HRBA principles, not just compliance. Evaluation's primary purpose must be to assess whether people's rights are being respected, protected, and fulfilled, and whether duty-bearers (governments and institutions) are meeting their measurable obligations. This human rights-based approach shifts the focus from simply asking, "Did we deliver services?" to the more transformative question, "Did we advance people's rights?". The principle of transparency, such as making all evaluation findings publicly available, is essential for accountability.

2. Equity requires moving beyond 'Leaving No One Behind' as a slogan. The imperative to leave no one behind must be deeply embedded in evaluation practice, moving past superficial rhetoric to genuine transformative change. This requires evaluators to address the systemic barriers and structural factors that cause and sustain inequity. It also necessitates shifting the unit of analysis beyond a single project to adopt a longitudinal, ecological view of how interventions collectively improve the lives of the most disadvantaged populations over time.

3. Address power imbalances by making right-holders the primary audience. The design and implementation of evaluations must actively disrupt the dynamic where evaluation agendas are set by donors or political interests. To transform evidence into a tool of community power, evaluation must be legible, useful, and primarily accountable to the citizens and communities. This involves integrating their lived experiences from the planning phase through the formulation of recommendations and the dissemination of evaluation results.

4. Embrace epistemic humility and diversity in methodology. A truly transformative evaluation requires a fundamental shift in worldview, demanding epistemic humility from evaluators and funders. This means recognizing that different people think differently about problems and valuing diverse knowledge systems. Evaluators must move beyond methodological debates toward building an ecology of evidence that integrates various tools and respects community context as a measure of evaluation rigor. To truly hear marginalized voices, evaluators need to be more creative and willing to experiment with participatory and inclusive methods to capture different perspectives.

5. Technology must democratize evidence and be used responsibly. Technology serves as a powerful enabler for HRBA, significantly improving access to information, facilitating inclusive data gathering (e.g., geospatial mapping, mobile surveys), and allowing for earlier detection of human rights issues. However, its use comes with immense responsibility. Evaluators must actively safeguard against the digital divide perpetuating inequality and strictly adhere to data privacy and protection standards, ensuring technology is a tool for democratizing evidence, not just for collecting data faster.

6. Youth must be co-creators, not just data sources. Youth are essential co-creators in HRBA, bringing passion, creativity, and a deep commitment to social change. Their participation is a matter of both justice  and quality, as their perspectives deepen the understanding of complex change. Youth should be meaningfully engaged throughout the entire evaluation cycle—design, data analysis, and recommendation co-creation—not merely used as sources of data or as a "tick box" exercise.

7. Institutionalize the human rights-based approach for systemic impact. For evaluation to have a transformative effect, HRBA must be formally institutionalized at the national and organizational levels. The South African example shows that embedding equity and human rights into the national evaluation policy framework ensures evaluation is not an optional technical exercise but a constitutional tool for fairness and accountability. This systemic adoption helps governments correct course and redirect resources towards the historically marginalized.

The Eval4Action Future of Evaluation dialogues are a series of forward-looking discussions that explore innovative and adaptive approaches to evaluation. Designed to make evaluation more influential in a rapidly changing and complex world, these dialogues bring together a diverse range of voices—from experts to young evaluators—to share knowledge and highlight ways to future-proof the field of evaluation. Each monthly dialogue is aligned with an international action day, ensuring the conversations are timely and relevant to a global discourse. 

The next dialogue, “Are we educating evaluators of every generation, for the future?” will take place on 22 January 2026. Register

This article was written with AI support with human authors in the lead.