Columbia International Affairs Online: Working Papers

CIAO DATE: 05/2014

Policy-to-Outcome Indicators and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages

Federica Prina

September 2012

European Centre for Minority Issues

Abstract

Indicators to measure the performance of international human rights treaties are increasingly a requirement in the assessment of the impact of legal standards. In the case of national minority standards, the Council of Europe's Secretariat of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) began its work on indicators in 2008. Meanwhile, there has been no parallel process by the Council of Europe to compile indicators of impact for its other legally binding instrument that is of special relevance to national minorities: the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (the Charter). This paper provides a preliminary conceptual framework for the development of indicators to measure the impact of the Charter in the state parties to the instrument, using a policy-to-outcome approach. This approach is in line with the spirit of the Charter itself as an action-based, result-based instrument, structured around specific undertakings that states select and commit to fulfil.