The Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Data Project (http://www.humanrightsdata.org) annually rates the level of government respect for a variety of internationally recognized human rights. The CIRI data set currently contains quantitative indicators of 15 human rights for 195 countries, annually from 1981-2009. Each year, new data are released on Human Rights Day, December 10. The CIRI data are used in over 150 countries by scholars, students, policymakers, and analysts representing over 400 organizations. CIRI's Co-Directors are political scientists Dr. David Cingranelli

David Cingranelli

David Cingranelli is a professor of Political Science at Binghamton University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1977.-Publications:*Ethics and American Foreign Policy Toward the Third World...

 at Binghamton University, SUNY and Dr. David L. Richards

David L. Richards

David L. Richards is Associate Professor of Political Science and Human Rights at the University of Connecticut. He received his Ph.D. in 1999 from The State University of New York at Binghamton....

 at The University of Connecticut .

CIRI's activities can be followed via its blog at http://humanrightsdata.blogspot.com

Accessing the Data

The CIRI data are free for not-for-profit users. Once registered, CIRI users can create customized datsets, choosing only the indicators, countries, and years they need; or, they can download the entire data set. As of December 2007, CIRI began using its own numeric country identifier code, but continues to offer others for the purpose of data merging. The MyCIRI feature allows users to store their datasets on the CIRI server and easily update them when the master CIRI data are updated.

Financial Support

Financial support for the CIRI Data Project has come from the United States' National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

; The World Bank; GTZ; Binghamton University

Binghamton University

Binghamton University, also formally called State University of New York at Binghamton, , is a public research university in the State of New York. The University is one of the four university centers in the State University of New York system...

, SUNY; the Center on Democratic Performance at Binghamton University, SUNY; The Human Rights Institute and College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at The University of Connecticut.

Existing CIRI Human Rights Indicators

Currently, the human rights for which government levels of respect are annually rated by CIRI include (alphabetically):

• Assembly & Association
• Disappearance
• Domestic Movement
• Electoral Self-Determination (formerly Political Participation & Free and Fair Elections)
• Empowerment Rights Index (An additive index summarizing government respect for electoral self-determination, movement, religion, speech, and workers' rights)
• Extrajudicial Killing
• Foreign Movement
• Physical Integrity Rights Index (An additive index summarizing government respect for disappearance, extrajudicial killing, political imprisonment, and torture)
• Political Imprisonment
• Religion
• Speech
• Torture
• Women's Economic Rights
• Women's Political Rights
• Women's Social Rights
• Workers' Rights