The CIRI Human Rights Dataset provides standards-based quantitative information on government respect for 15 internationally recognized human rights. It covers 202 countries annually from 1981 to 2011. David Cingranelli of Binghamton University created the dataset with support from the National Science Foundation.
Use Cases
- Modeling the causes of human rights violations based on quantitative indicators of government respect.
- Estimating the human rights effects of democratization based on annual country-level scores.
- Analyzing the impact of economic aid or military aid on human rights outcomes.
- Studying the consequences of structural adjustment or humanitarian intervention policies.
- Testing theories linking institutional changes to changes in human rights practices.
Strengths
- Quantitative information on 15 internationally recognized human rights.
- Annual coverage for 202 countries over a 31-year period (1981-2011).
- Creation supported by multiple National Science Foundation grants.
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
Provenance
- Source
- David Cingranelli, Binghamton University
- Collection Method
- Standards-based quantitative coding of government respect for human rights.
- Time Range
- 1981-2011
- Geography
- 202 countries