A/HRC/12/WG.2/TF/2 page 14 C. Right to development criteria 52. Mr. Marks provided background information on the mandate of the task force on the progressive development and refinement of the criteria, and read out the relevant recommendation made by the Working Group at its ninth session. In particular, the Working Group requested the task force to draw on the necessary expertise to make the criteria analytically and methodologically rigorous and to provide empirically-oriented tools to those involved in implementing development partnerships. It was therefore decided that a meeting of international experts should be convened to achieve these objectives. 53. On behalf of a task force consultant, Mr. Marks presented the outcome of the expert meeting (A/HRC/12/WG.2/TF/CRP.7) on methodological issues of qualitative and quantitative tools for measuring compliance with the right to development, held from 27 to 29 January 2009 at the Harvard Kennedy School. He referred to three sets of methodological challenges addressed at the expert meeting: (a) The criteria should be both useful tools to partnerships in the light of their technical mandate, and cover the full range of themes, raised by Millennium Development Goal 8; (b) The criteria should be a basis for both an evaluation of the effectiveness of partnerships and for dialogue, without judging the partnership; (c) The criteria should focus on both Millennium Development Goal 8 partnerships and anticipate the eventual preparation of coherent and comprehensive standards or guidelines not specific to Goal 8. 54. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung explained the study on applying the right to development criteria to a specific bilateral development cooperation mechanism, namely, the cooperation of Germany with Kenya, in which the matrix which was developed showed how important indicators were to respond to the criteria. 55. In the ensuing discussion, it was explained that there was no fundamental difference between the concepts of sub-criteria and indicators, both of which refer to tools of measurement of progress made to reach the goals set by the criteria. The inadequacies of targets and indicators of Millennium Development Goal 8 should not limit the task force in developing and applying criteria. The discussion revealed that the task force could not review all partnerships, but was expected to produce concrete advice and provide tools in the form of operational criteria and appropriate indicators that could be adopted by stakeholders for use on the ground. There was no partnership at the multilateral, regional or bilateral levels explicitly anchored in the right to development framework. Therefore, rather than using the partnerships to define right to development criteria, it should be the other way around. 56. The assessment of partnerships served to address certain gaps and introduced certain principles seen as important for reaching the objectives for which the partnerships had been created. The right to development addressed such principles, but went further than the areas covered by Millenium Development Goal 8. Considering the evolving priorities of the international community, the criteria should also address climate change and the global economic and financial crises.