How well is Malaysia respecting people's human rights? HRMI Findings
(Was my last update really in February? I promise to get better at this...)
The Human Rights Measurement Initiative (a global project tracking human rights performance) released its latest report three days ago, following data collection from over 600 respondents. As one of the 600, I was impressed with the granularity and detail of questions, as well as the work that goes into cultivating a global network of human rights defenders and advocates.
Here are some highlights from the Malaysia dataset, and you can read at your own leisure (it’s free!) by clicking here.
Malaysia’s quality of life score varies across categories. We are middling on the right to education (67.5%) and right to food (63.9%), but performed well on right to housing (90.8%) and right to work (99.8%). I surmise that right to work is scored differently from labour rights. The total scoring of 79.1% would indicate we are close to average across East Asia.
Malaysia does okay-ish on safety from the state: it scores a total of 7.1/10 for on specific liberties with a borderline bad-fair ranking on the right to be free from torture, but full marks for no death penalty. This means a significant number of people are not safe from abuse by state apparatus.
It scores a measly 4.8/10 on civil and political rights… makes sense, honestly. We hit 4.2 for freedom of opinion and expression, and 4.5 for freedom of religion and belief. As a former journalist I’d love to go into a
rantopinionated monologue on specific ministries that may or may not rhyme with Shomunnications, but let’s do that over coffee another time. What this crappy score means is that many people do not get to enjoy their civil liberties and political freedoms which include the right to assembly and free speech.
Finally, the human rights experts surveyed selected a list of groups/peoples who were particularly at risk of violations across these rights. Migrants and immigrants ranked high on almost all lists and topped them in three instances, often closely followed by refugees and stateless people. This section also includes comments from myself and other experts (find here), and I would recommend you read through them as they provide a useful snapshot of national policy gaps.
Thanks for reading, and I hope to be better at updating. BTW, if you feel inclined to entertain a shameless ask: could you like this LinkedIn page so I can experience the dopamine rush that comes with collecting social media validation? Thanks!