The Initiative for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Health Sector Reforms is an international research, capacity building and advocacy project (also known as the Rights and Reforms Initiative). It aims to promote health sector reforms that are conducive to implementing the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development's (ICPD) Programme of Action, are driven by in-country actors, and are responsive to the needs of the people of the country, especially poor women. The main purpose of the Initiative is to strengthen understanding amongst activists and decision-makers of the role of global social and economic changes and specifically of health sector reforms (HSR) in facilitating or undermining efforts to achieve sexual and reproductive rights in health policies and programmes.
Values, Policies and Rights
Lynn Freedman argues in the journal Development that achieving the MDGs will require massive new investment in the health sector but also notes that success is not only about money but also the way in which the connection between health and development is constructed. She writes: "This is the hidden opportunity of the MDGs: With health recognized as a central part of a wider development agenda, we have a chance to push past the conventional target-based public health approach and to re-ground health policy in the most critical debates of the day, including globalization, human security, equity, human rights, and poverty reduction."
"One-third of all human lives end in early death from poverty-related causes. Most of these premature deaths are avoidable through global institutional reforms that would eradicate extreme poverty...The rules should be redesigned so that the development of any new drug is rewarded in proportion to its impact on the global disease burden...The existing medical-patent regime (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights - TRIPS - as supplemented by bilateral agreements) is severely unjust - and its imposition a human-rights violation on account of the avoidable mortality and morbidity it foreseeably produces."
There are between 500 and 700 AIDS-related deaths in Kenya every day. Beyond this tragedy, the HIV/AIDS epidemic creates problems in many aspects of social and economic life. One such problem is decreased security of land tenure. There are dramatic accounts of AIDS widows and orphans being chased from their land and many more that tell of an increased sense of tenure insecurity due to HIV/AIDS. Is this the whole story of the relationship between HIV/AIDS and land rights? Research sponsored by the Department for International Development (UK) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations examines the relationship between HIV/AIDS and land rights in three Kenyan districts.
The People's Health Movement, an international organisation of health activists, launched a new global campaign on the right to health at its second assembly in Cuenca, Ecuador, held from 18 to 23 July. Assembly delegates from many countries attested to the campaign's importance. Increasing erosion in access to universal health care, growth of unregulated private providers, and declines in public funding are leaving millions of people without insured services.
"It is time to shift the debate over HIV prevention in Uganda. Rather than focusing on the precise combination of A, B, and C that contributed to the country's HIV decline, researchers should condemn censorship of life-saving HIV/AIDS information and discrimination against vulnerable populations such as lesbians and gays. It is bad enough that the USA is exporting ignorance and prejudice to countries already devastated by HIV. Researchers should not ignore these human-rights violations by focusing on the wrong issue." (requires registration)
This article explores the relationship between public health and human rights using as an example the Brazilian policy on free and universal access to antiretroviral medicines for people living with HIV/AIDS. The Brazilian response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which arose from initiatives in both civil society and the governmental sector, followed the process of the democratization of the country. If the Brazilian experience may not be easily transferred to other realities, the model of the Brazilian response may nonetheless serve as an inspiration to finding appropriate and life-saving solutions in other national contexts. (abstract only)
This bibliography pulls together recent articles that speak to the relationship between human rights and health, particularly focused on health equity, poverty and community agency. The bibliography was prepared for the EQUINET Health Rights theme and the articles described in the bibliography have informed much of the conceptual approaches developed in EQUINET to harnessing rights approaches to build health equity. The bibliography overlaps to some extent with other bibliographies held by EQUINET on health equity themes. It should prove useful for researchers exploring issues of human rights in relation to equity. The intention is to keep this bibliography updated in future, to support EQUINET’s activities in this area.
The audit aims to 1. conduct a review of the regional and international human rights instruments relevant to health; and 2. review the national commitments that have been made under these human rights instruments.
In the last few years, there has been growing talk amongst development actors and agencies about a “rights-based approach” to development. Yet what exactly this consists of remains unclear. For some, its grounding in human rights legislation makes such an approach distinctive, lending it the promise of re-politicising areas of development work that have become domesticated as they have been “mainstreamed” by powerful institutions like the World Bank. Others complain that like other fashions it has become the latest designer item to be seen to be wearing and has been used to dress up the same old development. This paper from the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) seeks to unravel some of the tangled threads of contemporary rights talk.