The Future of Global Governance for Health: Putting Rights at the Center of ... The World Trade Organization: Carving Out the Right to Health for Access to ..... body of evidence for and concrete examples of optimizing health program outcomes ...
Human Rights in Global Health: Rights-Based Governance for a Globalizing World By: Benjamin Mason Meier and Lawrence O. Gostin ISBN: 9780190672676 Book abstract Institutions matter for the advancement of human rights in global health. Given the dramatic development of human rights under international law and the parallel proliferation of global institutions for public health, there arises an imperative to understand the implementation of human rights through global health governance. This volume examines the evolving relationship between human rights, global governance, and public health, studying an expansive set of health challenges through a multi-sectoral array of global organizations. To analyze the structural determinants of rights-based governance, the organizations in this volume include those international bureaucracies that implement human rights in ways that influence public health in a globalizing world. Bringing together leading health and human rights scholars and practitioners from academia, non-governmental organizations, and the United Nations system, this volume explores: (1) the foundations of human rights as a normative framework for global health governance, (2) the mandate of the World Health Organization to pursue a human rights-based approach to health, (3) the role of inter-governmental organizations across a range of health-related human rights, (4) the influence of rights-based economic governance on public health, and (5) the focus on global health among institutions of human rights governance. Contributing chapters each map the distinct human rights activities within a specific institution of global governance for health. Through the comparative institutional analysis in this volume, the contributing authors examine institutional dynamics to operationalize human rights in organizational policies, programs, and practices and assess institutional factors that facilitate or inhibit human rights mainstreaming for global health advancement.
Book keywords Human rights, Global health, Global governance, Global health governance, Institutions, International law, Health and human rights, Human rights-based approach to health, Human rights mainstreaming
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Responding to the Public Health Harms of a Globalizing World through Human Rights in Global Governance SECTION I: HUMAN RIGHTS IN GLOBAL HEALTH 1. The Origins of Human Rights in Global Health 2. The Evolution of Applying Human Rights Frameworks to Health 3. Framing Human Rights in Global Health Governance 4. The Future of Global Governance for Health: Putting Rights at the Center of Sustainable Development SECTION II: WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION 5. Development of Human Rights Through WHO 6. Mainstreaming Human Rights Across WHO 7. The Future of Human Rights in WHO SECTION III: INTER-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS 8. The United Nations Children’s Fund: Implementing Human Rights for Child Health 9. The International Labor Organization: Human Rights to Health and Safety at Work 10. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization: Advancing Global Health Through Human Rights in Education and Science 11. The United Nations Population Fund: An Evolving Human Rights Mission and Approach to Sexual and Reproductive Health 12. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: Advancing the Right to Food to Promote Public Health 13. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS: With Communities for Human Rights 14. The Future of Intergovernmental Partnerships for Health and Human Rights SECTION IV: GLOBAL ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE & GLOBAL HEALTH FUNDING AGENCIES 15. Integrating a Human Rights-Based Approach and the Right to Development into Global Governance for Health 16. The World Bank: Contested Institutional Progress in Rights-Based Health Discourse 17. The World Trade Organization: Carving Out the Right to Health for Access to Medicines and Tobacco Control 18. National Foreign Assistance Programs: Advancing Health-Related Human Rights Through Shared Obligations for Global Health 19. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria: Funding Basic Services and Meeting the Challenge of Rights-Based Programs 20. The Future of Multilateral Funding to Realize the Right to Health SECTION V: GLOBAL HEALTH IN HUMAN RIGHTS GOVERNANCE 21. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: Putting the Right to Health on the Agenda 22. United National Special Procedures: Peopling Human Rights, Peopling Global Health 23. Human Rights Treaty Bodies: Monitoring, Interpreting, and Adjudicating HealthRelated Human Rights 24. The Future of Human Rights Accountability for Global Health under the Universal Periodic Review Comparative Analysis on Human Rights in Global Governance for Health
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Chapter 1: The Origins of Human Rights in Global Health By: Lawrence O. Gostin and Benjamin Mason Meier
Chapter abstract This chapter introduces the foundational importance of human rights for global health, providing a theoretical basis for the edited volume by laying out the role of human rights under international law as a normative basis for public health. By addressing public health harms as human rights violations, international law has offered global standards by which to frame government responsibilities and evaluate health policies, shifting the global health debate from political aspiration to legal accountability. The authors trace the historical foundations for understanding the development of human rights and the role of human rights in protecting and promoting health since the end of World War II and birth of the United Nations. Examining the development of human rights under international law, the authors introduce the right to health as an encompassing right to health care and underlying determinants of health, exploring this right alongside other “health-related human rights.”
Chapter keywords United Nations, Social medicine, World Health Organization, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Right to health, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Declaration of Alma-Ata, Rights-based approach to health, HIV/AIDS
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Chapter 2: The Evolution of Applying Human Rights Frameworks to Health By: Alicia Ely Yamin and Andrés Constantin
Chapter abstract This chapter explores the evolution and struggles of the “health and human rights movement”, focusing particularly on relevant developments in health and international law that enabled greater attention to the right to health. It further discusses the evolution of human rights-based approaches (HRBAs) to health, which extended these legal concepts into the domains of development and social policy. Over twenty years after it began to take shape, the “health and human rights” field is not one discipline but many. This cluster of related work now faces the new challenges of a precariously constructed international normative scaffolding, the complexities of moving from constitutional norms to effective enjoyment in practice at the national level, and the potential danger of HRBAs being reduced to technocratic formulas and emptied of their subversive potential.
Chapter keywords Global health, Human rights, Health-related rights, HRBAs, Development agendas, International law, Social justice
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Chapter 3: Framing Human Rights in Global Health Governance By: Benjamin Mason Meier and Lawrence O. Gostin
Chapter abstract This chapter frames the implementation of human rights law through global health governance. Global governance institutions have sought to translate human rights into public policy, shifting from the development of health-related rights under international law to the implementation of these normative standards in global policies, programs, and practices. This shift toward an “era of implementation” across an expanding global health governance landscape looks beyond the traditional “human rights system” in implementing human rights for global health. Analyzing human rights as part of global health law, this chapter examines how human rights have become a framework for global governance, with institutions of global governance for health seeking to “mainstream” human rights in organizational practice. This chapter concludes that there is a need for institutional analysis to compare organizational approaches conducive to the implementation of health-related human rights.
Chapter keywords Global health governance, human rights law, global health law, institutions, human rights mainstreaming, United Nations Development Group
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Chapter 4: The Future of Global Governance for Health: Putting Rights at the Center of Sustainable Development By: Michel Sidibé, Helena Nygren-Krug, Bronwyn McBride, and Kent Buse
Chapter abstract This chapter argues that the current global health agenda has failed to put people and their rights at the center. With communities unable to have their voices heard, challenge injustice, and hold decision-makers to account, states are ill-equipped to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 3 to ensure healthy lives and well-being for all. The chapter articulates a shift from a discretionary development paradigm to a rights-based paradigm for global health, building on rights-based approaches that have been proven to work – as in the AIDS response. Seven reforms are proposed, addressing 1) priorities, 2) rights-based systems for health, 3) democratizing data to monitor progress, 4) enhancing access to justice, 5) safeguarding the right to health, 6) innovative partnerships, and 7) health financing. These reforms call for a broad social movement for global governance for health, advancing people and their rights and operationalizing rights-based approaches across the SDGs.
Chapter keywords Agenda 2030, Global health, Governance, Human rights, Sustainable development
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Chapter 5: Development of Human Rights Through WHO By: Benjamin Mason Meier and Florian Kastler
Chapter abstract With both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the World Health Organization (WHO) coming into existence in 1948, there was great postwar promise that these two institutions would complement each other, with WHO serving to support human rights in its policies and programs. Yet WHO’s support for human rights would vary dramatically over the ensuing forty years – neglecting human rights law during crucial years in the development of healthrelated rights, implementing human rights as a foundation for its “Health for All” campaign, and operationalizing rights-based standards in the international response to HIV/AIDS. This chapter examines WHO’s evolving contributions to (and, in some cases, negligence of) the rights-based approach to health, with this history framing WHO’s enduring challenges to exercise its international legal authorities, collaborate with the United Nations human rights system, and mainstream human rights in the WHO Secretariat.
Chapter keywords World Health Organization, International health governance, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Cold War, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Health for All, Declaration of Alma-Ata, HIV/AIDS
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Chapter 6: Mainstreaming Human Rights Across WHO By: Rebekah Thomas and Veronica Magar
Chapter abstract This chapter describes the efforts undertaken since 2013 to mainstream equity, gender, and human rights into the programmes, policies, and practices of the World Health Organization (WHO). With a largely medical and public health staff, for whom the language of rights remains unfamiliar, and an organization focused on providing technical and normative support, WHO is thought to be ill-equipped to make rights a core part of its activities. However, there are signs that this is changing. Starting with the adoption of an integrated approach to equity, gender, and human rights in 2012, this chapter explores how these cross-cutting values are being mainstreamed into the Organization, but also how norms and principles of human rights and the core attributes of a right to health are finding resonance across a wide range of health programmes.
Chapter keywords Human rights, Health, Gender, Equity, Mainstreaming, Social determinants, World Health Organization
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Chapter 7: The Future of Human Rights in WHO By: Flavia Bustreo, Veronica Magar, Rajat Khosla, Marcus Marcellus Stahlhofer, and Rebekah Thomas
Chapter abstract This chapter examines how the Sustainable Development Agenda has provided an unprecedented opportunity to advance human rights within the World Health Organization (WHO), with its focus on equity, gender equality, and human rights. We look at how human rights are increasingly permeating the Organization’s work, both implicitly and explicitly, and how this is paving the way for a bolder vision for human rights in health. Through this examination, the authors lay out a strategy for three necessary shifts that would set WHO on an unprecedented path toward more rights-based health governance. The three shifts are: the adoption of a Resolution by WHOs governing body on health both as a human right and as a means to achieve human rights (“to health and through health”); greater collaboration between WHO and the United Nations human rights system to promote rights-based approaches to health; and, building evidence of the impact of such approaches on health.
Chapter keywords Human rights, Health, Law, Mainstreaming, SDGs, World Health Organization
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Chapter 8: The United Nations Children’s Fund: Implementing Human Rights for Child Health By: Benjamin Mason Meier, Mitra Motlagh, and Kumanan Rasanathan
Chapter abstract This chapter assesses UNICEF efforts to implement the child’s right to health, reviewing UNICEF’s evolving governance to address global health, examining the influence of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) on UNICEF’s mission, and analyzing the opportunities and challenges in using a rights-based approach to advance children’s health. Where UNICEF had long been concerned by the practical implications of implementing human rights, the 1989 CRC solidified UNICEF’s central institutional role in the development and implementation of child rights. This development under international law created in a burgeoning implementation framework to advance child health and human rights. UNICEF has sought to implement the child’s right to health across its health programming, assistance to states, and work with the Committee on the Rights of the Child.
Chapter keywords Convention on the Rights of the Child, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Child health, Rights-based approach to health, Human rights mainstreaming, Treaty monitoring, Sustainable Development Goals
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Chapter 9: The International Labor Organization: Human Rights to Health and Safety at Work By: Lee Swepston
Chapter abstract Occupational safety and health (OSH) is a vital part of the right to health. While the International Labor Organization (ILO) historically treated OSH as an entirely technical matter, it has increasingly been influenced by a human rights agenda. The ILO has responded by adopting and promoting a large number of international standards – in the form of Conventions, Recommendations, and codes of practice that result in protection against dangers at work. These standards combat specific risks, guide the establishment of health protection across industries, provide guidance for dealing with HIV and AIDS in the workplace, help to set up systems of health protection, provide for how disabled workers can function, and design social security regimes. The ILO also provides practical help to prevent accidents and diseases at the workplace, and to stop industrial accidents that kill and injure large numbers of workers – and that have a damaging influence on public health.
Chapter keywords Safety and health, Occupational Safety and Health (OSH), Right to health, International Labor Organization (ILO), Disability, International standards, Conventions, Recommendations, Codes of practice, Social security
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Chapter 10: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization: Advancing Global Health Through Human Rights in Education and Science By: Audrey Chapman and Konstantinos Tararas
Chapter abstract This chapter focuses on the human rights work of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and its interconnection with initiatives relating to global health. Embedded in its Constitution, the promotion of human rights has been a component of UNESCO’s activities across its fields of competence from the first years of its existence. Although global health is not central to its mandate, many of UNESCO’s programs are either inextricably connected to global health or have contributed to UN initiatives promoting public health and the right to health. This is showcased through an overview of UNESCO’s efforts on: i) standard-setting and monitoring; ii) rights in education; and iii) rights in science. Enabling factors for a stronger human rights articulation of UNESCO’s global health initiatives are the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as a rights-based common standard of achievement and the consequent closer interagency cooperation and coordination.
Chapter keywords Rights in education, Human rights education, Right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress, Bioethics, Mainstreaming human rights, Comprehensive sexuality education, HIV, Physical education, Gender equality
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Chapter 11: The United Nations Population Fund: An Evolving Human Rights Mission and Approach to Sexual and Reproductive Health By: Emilie Filmer-Wilson and Luis Mora
Chapter abstract This chapter analyzes UNFPA’s evolving human rights approach to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, of which the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) was a major turning point. In translating the rights based vision of the ICPD, UNFPA has pursued two strategies: engaging with the human rights system to strengthen accountability for sexual and reproductive health and rights and advancing operational clarity and guidance on the links between human rights and sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights. In these efforts, important milestones have been achieved, and today, UNFPA is widely recognized as a human rights based organization. However, the organization has struggled to fully employ human rights into its work. The 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, on which UNFPA’s new Strategic Plan for 2018-2021 is based, provides a powerful framework for UNFPA to more fully align itself with the rights based vision of the ICPD.
Chapter keywords Sexual and reproductive health, Reproductive rights, Human rights, Human rights-based approach (HRBA), International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), Population and development
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Chapter 12: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: Advancing the Right to Food to Promote Public Health By: Olivier De Schutter and Carolin Anthes
Chapter abstract The core objective of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) since its founding in 1945 has been to eradicate hunger. International policy debates and the work of the Organization focused until the 1980s on increasing agricultural production; however, a shift has occurred in recent years in the understanding of FAO’s mandate. The modest but growing reference to the right to food is an essential part of this new thinking, which crystalized at the 1996 World Food Summit and in the adoption of the 2004 Right to Food Guidelines. Although the visibility of the right to food has gradually increased in the Organization’s work, this chapter—while assessing the past and current state of mainstreaming the right to food within FAO—argues that right to food mainstreaming within FAO is far from unidirectional and has more recently seen a period of retrenchment.
Chapter keywords The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO); Right to (adequate) food; Food security; Human rights mainstreaming; Member states support; Institutional leadership; Organizational culture; Silo; Siloization; Funding crisis
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Chapter 13: The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS: With Communities for Human Rights By: Helena Nygren-Krug
Chapter abstract This chapter centers on the role of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in promoting and protecting HIV-related human rights. It starts by recalling the rationale for creating UNAIDS, and explains how its mandate and structure has enabled communities affected by HIV to remain engaged. This engagement has been critical in ensuring that human rights considerations remain at the forefront of the global AIDS response. The chapter also looks at the journey ahead, taking “AIDS out of isolation.” It argues that this process can benefit not only the AIDS response but also other health-related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets, in particular Universal Health Coverage (UHC). It concludes by recognizing the SDGs as a springboard for UNAIDS to scale up efforts to support the realization of human rights, which will, ultimately, determine whether we will be able to reach the end of the AIDS epidemic.
Chapter keywords Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development; Communities; Governance; Key populations; Human rights; Participation; UNAIDS; Universal health coverage (UHC)
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Chapter 14: The Future of Inter-Governmental Partnerships for Health and Human Rights By: Sarah Hawkes, Julia Kreienkamp, and Kent Buse
Chapter abstract Over the past 20+ years, there has been a significant rise in the ‘partnership model’ in global health. Mainly involving collaboration between public and private spheres, some partnerships include only intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). This chapter explores how three types of partnerships—global public-private partnerships (usually focused on strengthening delivery or access to specific products and technologies), public-public partnerships addressing climate change (a key and growing determinant of health outcomes), and a public-public partnership of four IGOs working to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis—protect, promote, and realize human rights principles in their work. Beyond a superficial framing of “protecting the vulnerable” or acknowledgement of the importance of human rights, there remains little substantive human rightsfocused activity in the majority of partnerships. This chapter offers an agenda for mainstreaming human rights more explicitly into the work of these key actors in global health.
Chapter keywords Partnership, Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), Human Rights, Health, Climate Change
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Chapter 15: Integrating a Human Rights-Based Approach and the Right to Development into Global Governance for Health By: Stephen P. Marks
Chapter abstract This chapter applies two approaches to global economic governance of relevance to global health funding agencies. The first is the human rights-based approach to development, with its theoretical grounding in social justice and capabilities and with its practical applications in agencies engaged in development assistance and financing of health interventions, with particular relevance to the 2030 Development Agenda. The second approach is that of the right to development, as clarified in terms of policy, process, and outcomes, and as applied to the three funding programs that direct resources to global health issues. The chapter concludes that the mainstreaming of the human rights-based approach to development has been integrated into practice—albeit on a modest scale—more than the right to development, due primarily to a lack of incentives, notwithstanding the potential of both approaches to inflect global governance institutions in ways that advance human rights for global health.
Chapter keywords Human rights-based approach to development, Millennium Development Goals, Sustainable Development, Goals, Social justice, Capabilities, High level task force on the implementation of the right to development, Declaration on the Right to Development, the 2030 Development Agenda
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Chapter 16: The World Bank: Contested Institutional Progress in Rights-Based Health Discourse By: Yusura Ribhi Shawar and Jennifer Prah Ruger
Chapter abstract The World Bank, one of the largest global health funders, continues to deny a formal legal obligation for human rights. Internal constraints limit the Bank’s ability to do so, since its Articles of Agreement explicitly forbid it from interfering in a country’s internal political affairs, making it unclear whether human rights risk management is within the institution’s mandate. This stands in contrast to the institution’s commitment to human rights, as reflected in its commitment to helping countries achieve universal health coverage and in its “twin goals” of ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity, which fundamentally contribute to the realization of social and economic rights. This chapter critically analyzes the ways in which rights-based discourse has evolved in the Bank’s global health policies and practices and identifies the institutional factors that have shaped its consideration of human rights.
Chapter keywords World Bank, Human Rights, Global Health, Right to Health, Universal Health Coverage
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Chapter 17: The World Trade Organization: Carving Out the Right to Health for Access to Medicines and Tobacco Control By: Suerie Moon and Thirukumaran Balasubramaniam
Chapter abstract The ability of governments to protect and promote health-related human rights can be constrained by international trade rules, including those of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO rules can increase medicines prices, challenge tobacco control measures, restrict national food safety policies, and facilitate brain drain from public health services. This chapter offers a brief history of the WTO’s origins, a high-level overview of the health implications of various WTO agreements, a closer look at how two key issues—access to medicines and tobacco control—have created greater policy space for health within the WTO. It then identifies the institutional factors that promote or hinder human rights protection and offers conclusions on the prospects for institutionalization of health-related human rights. This chapter concludes that protecting health within the WTO and broader global trade regime is possible, but remains a significant challenge due to major power asymmetries.
Chapter keywords World Trade Organization (WTO), Trade, Human rights, TRIPS, Intellectual property, Access to medicines, Tobacco control, Plain packaging, Right to health, Regional trade agreements
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Chapter 18: National Foreign Assistance Programs: Advancing Health-Related Human Rights Through Shared Obligations for Global Health By: Rachel Hammonds and Gorik Ooms
Chapter abstract This chapter reviews the role of bilateral development assistance in advancing health-related international human rights obligations by examining the evolution of efforts to coordinate bilateral development assistance agencies and the international public financing dimensions of their governance and goals. This chapter examines the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC) as an entry point for examining: the evolution of international obligations for health-related rights, focusing on the right to health; the origins of the OECD-DAC and the parallel rise of national development assistance agencies; the factors that facilitated and/or inhibited a coordinated approach to human rights mainstreaming in bilateral development assistance agencies and the emergence of the aid effectiveness agenda and the International Health Partnership Plus Related Initiatives. This chapter concludes by assessing upcoming challenges to coordinate bilateral development assistance for health.
Chapter keywords Right to health, Health-related rights, Coordination, Bilateral development assistance, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Overseas Development Assistance, Development Assistance for Health, Aid effectiveness, International Health Partnership Plus Related Initiatives
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Chapter 19: The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria: Funding Basic Services and Meeting the Challenge of RightsBased Programs By: Ralf Jürgens, Joanne Csete, Hyeyoung Lim, Susan Timberlate, and Matthew Smith
Chapter abstracts The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria was born of an interest among donors to greatly expand access to basic services to address three diseases. Spurred in many cases by civil society organizations, the Global Fund recognized that the health services it supported would not be effective or cost-effective without efforts to reduce human rights-related barriers to access and utilization of health services, particularly those faced by socially marginalized and criminalized persons. Through well defined institutional strategies and financial and technical support to program designers and implementers, the Global Fund is generating a body of evidence for and concrete examples of optimizing health program outcomes by reducing stigma, discrimination, abusive policing, gender inequality and other barriers to health services.
Chapter keywords HIV, Tuberculosis, Malaria, Human rights, Discrimination, Human rights-based approaches (HRBAs)
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Chapter 20: The Future of Multilateral Funding to Realize the Right to Health By: Gorik Ooms and Rachel Hammonds
Chapter abstract This chapter explores the future of multilateral funding to realize the right to health by exploring two options: a single Global Fund for Health or international assistance for health through only bilateral arrangements. This analysis first examines a Global Fund for Health, based on Article 2(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, guidance provided by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and features of the existing Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The chapter then examines the alternative option, comparing the likely qualities of both options in terms of being aligned with national priorities (if appropriately set), additional (i.e., incentivizing domestic mobilization of financial resources), reliable in the long run, coordinated, and sufficient. The chapter concludes by analyzing the political feasibility of both options.
Chapter keywords Right to health, International assistance, Core obligations, Health security, Multilateral, Bilateral
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Chapter 21: The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: Putting the Right to Health on the Agenda By: Gillian MacNaughton and Mariah McGill
Chapter abstract For over two decades, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has taken a leading role in promoting human rights globally by building the capacity of people to claim their rights and governments to fulfill their obligations. This chapter examines the extent to which the right to health has evolved in the work of the OHCHR since 1994, drawing on archival records of OHCHR publications and initiatives and interviews with OHCHR staff and external experts on the right to health. Analyzing this history, the chapter then points to factors that have facilitated or inhibited the mainstreaming of the right to health at the OHCHR, including (1) an increasing acceptance of economic and social rights as real human rights, (2) right-to-health champions among the leadership, (3) limited capacity and resources, and (4) challenges in moving beyond conceptualization to implementation of the right to health.
Chapter keywords Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, right to health, economic and social rights, leadership, limited resources, interdisciplinary
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Chapter 22: United Nations Special Procedures: Peopling Human Rights, Peopling Global Health By: Thérèse Murphy and Amrei Mueller
Chapter abstract This chapter examines the UN Special Procedures, a system of independent experts appointed to monitor and report on human rights violations and to advise and assist in promoting and protecting rights. It positions the Special Procedures as a “missing population,” neglected by proponents of global health human rights. Where this neglect makes human rights law more vulnerable to misrepresentation, this chapter sets out to counter this neglect by “peopling” human rights law. It does this by adding the Special Rapporteurs and others who make up the system of Special Procedures, positioning these experts as an essential supplement to the cast of characters—courts, treaty bodies, nongovernmental organizations, victims, and states—that dominate accounts of human rights law. Adding Special Procedures would help in particular to address the widespread failure to see human rights law as a deliberative and iterative process that draws in a range of actors.
Chapter keywords UN Special Procedures, UN Special Rapporteurs, Right to health, Health, Underlying determinants of health, Human rights-based approach (HRBA), Global health
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Chapter 23: Human Rights Treaty Bodies: Monitoring, Interpreting, and Adjudicating Health-Related Human Rights By: Benjamin Mason Meier and Virginia Brás Gomes
Chapter abstract This chapter analyzes the role of human rights treaty bodies in monitoring, interpreting, and adjudicating health-related human rights obligations, facilitating accountability for the realization of human rights in health policy. With each core human rights treaty having its own corresponding human rights treaty body, these international institutions influence states and galvanize advocates to take action to realize human rights across a range of global health issues. Describing treaty body efforts to monitor state implementation, interpret human rights, and adjudicate individual complaints, this chapter reviews the evolving composition and functions of these treaty bodies and analyzes their effectiveness in facilitating the implementation of human rights as a basis for global health. Given recent United Nations efforts to strengthen treaty body functions and streamline monitoring processes, treaty bodies provide complementary approaches for public health practitioners to support accountability for the implementation of health-related human rights.
Chapter keywords Human rights treaty bodies, Human rights monitoring, Accountability, Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Human rights indicators
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Chapter 24: The Future of Human Rights Accountability for Global Health under the Universal Periodic Review By: Benjamin Mason Meier and Virginia Brás Gomes
Chapter abstract This chapter examines the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a new peer-review procedure that provides scrutiny of each UN member state’s human rights record every five years. The review process culminates in a set of recommendations issued to each “State-under-Review” (SUR). The UPR provides an unprecedented opportunity to routinely hold all states to account for their obligations under international human rights law, including health-related human rights. Health recommendations have featured prominently in the recommendations issued to SURs and have a comparatively high implementation rate. Data from the UPR indicate that the UPR could have a potentially, or already, important role in holding states to account for healthrelated human rights as well political global health commitments, such as those found in the Sustainable Development Goals. However, certain shortcomings should be addressed, including an uneven spread of recommendations across different health issues and limited engagement of the public health community.
Chapter keywords Accountability, Universal Periodic Review, Health-related rights, Economic, social and cultural Rights, Human Rights Council
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