V. >> F ramework in Practice - Implementing and Monitoring Rights >> Using indicators for human rights point for assessing compliance with treaty reporting and follow-up. Furthermore, the steps in the selection of indicators and their contextualization outlined in chapter IV help to arrive at a meaningful set of indicators. Once relevant indicators have been Box 25 identified, it is useful to have benchmarks to be achieved for those indicators in a given period of time. Such benchmarks or targets compel States to commit and deliver, thereby improving accountability in implementing their human rights obligations.3 Using indicators to improve reporting to treaty bodies - Guatemala Guatemala is perhaps the first country which used the OHCHR framework and lists of illustrative indicators for its periodic report to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Under the leadership of the Presidential Commission on Human Rights of Guatemala, an inter-institutional participatory process took place to draw up the report and analyse data on economic, social and cultural rights. In 2009, OHCHRGuatemala had started providing assistance on indicators to the Presidential Commission as well as other national stakeholders, including the Human Rights Ombudsman (a national institution granted “A” status by the International Coordinating Committee of National Institutions), the National Secretariat for Planning, the National Council for People with Disabilities, the Coordination Office for Mainstreaming Gender and Indigenous Peoples Statistics, the UNDP Human Development Report Office and UNFPA. Following an assessment of available statistical information, Guatemala decided to draw on the OHCHR framework in relation to the rights to health, food and education. The guidelines for State party reporting of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the OHCHR indicator framework facilitated reporting. According to the third periodic report of Guatemala (E/C.12/GTM/3), using indicators is a mechanism that brings about transparency and makes national statistical systems aware of the opportunity of providing available human rights data to potential users in the academic, political and monitoring fields. For reporting on the right to health, a new survey on maternal and infant health was particularly useful in producing several process and outcome indicators relevant to the “sexual and reproductive health” and “child mortality and health care” attributes identified for this right. Source: “Guidelines on treaty-specific documents to be submitted by States parties under articles 16 and 17 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights” (E/C.12/2008/2). There are different sources or methods for setting targets or benchmarks for indicators. The first source is the normative human rights framework. For instance, article 14 on compulsory primary 3. One example of a violation of the human rights obligation to fulfil (i.e., failure of a State party to take the necessary steps to ensure the realization of a right) as highlighted by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is the failure to monitor the nationwide realization of a right, by identifying right-to-health indicators and benchmarks for example (general comment No. 14 (2000) on the right to the highest attainable standard of health, para. 52). Human Rights Indicators 105