to ­ indicate the effectiveness of their public awareness programmes. It is ­often ­ assumed that an increase in complaints implies the programme is ­successful. However, this apparently reasonable assumption may not be justified. ­ Complaints may have risen because the human rights situation has ­deteriorated. ­ Conversely, if complaints fall in number, it might imply that the ­situation has ­improved, rather than that public education is ineffective. This aspect is fundamental: there is no point in juggling with the data if the ­information is irrelevant to the questions that need to be addressed. The ­lesson is that carelessly chosen indicators may not tell an institution what it wants to know. An NHRI should always question whether the indicators used do ­indeed show what they want to show and whether they are really relevant to the ­questions they want answered. In most cases, NHRIs will also have to work with imperfect data – with flawed statistics and statistics that were not collected with the NHRI’s purposes in mind. Whereas NHRIs can gather information about their own activities, they are not usually in a position to collect general data about social and economic trends. In this respect, NHRIs cannot realistically expect to offer an alternative to the government’s statistical service. In many instances, they are bound to work mainly with official statistics, even if its figures are imperfect. On the other hand, NHRIs can identify the type of information they need in order to evaluate government policies in relation to human rights, and can lobby government and academic and other research institutions to make that information available. 4. Interpreting indicators All data and indicators need to be interpreted. While it is possible to develop benchmarks that broadly apply to most NHRIs, indicators must be tailor-made for the context in which they will be used. Ultimately, indicators must be identified and interpreted in the context of an ­ analysis, which requires in-depth knowledge of the country, the human rights situation, and the relationships between the NHRI and its partners and ­beneficiaries. Indicators do not speak for themselves; they must be put in ­context and interpreted in relation to a purpose. The obvious objection is that such interpretation is subjective. National ­institutions will interpret indicators as they see fit, in a manner favourable to themselves. This objection stands up only if one believes that indicators provide “true” answers in a simple way. In reality they do not. Well-­chosen indicators will help NHRIs to make sense of their performance and ­impact, but on their own they will only provide answers of a limited and specific kind, in relation to the purposes for which they were selected. Indeed, using indicators should cause NHRIs to ask new questions and analyse information more carefully, and this is in itself a useful outcome of adopting an indicator-based approach. External evaluators are sometimes called in to review the work of NHRIs. They will apply their own methodology, often based on indicators, to make their ­assessment. External evaluators are often considered useful because they are 28 Assessing the Effectiveness of National Human Rights Institutions