Submissions

Health and Human Rights is currently seeking articles for future issues. Accepted contributions will be published in the journal’s open access electronic and print versions. Articles are invited for Critical Concepts (5,000–7,000 words) and for Health and Human Rights in Practice (500–7,000 words).

Issue 10:2 Accountability
The Journal is no longer accepting submissions for this issue.

Issue 11:1 Participation
Submissions due: January 1, 2009; French and Spanish submissions: December 15, 2008.

Meaningful participation or agency is key to the true realization of the right to health, as well as with all human rights. However, participation can mean very different things to different actors. Indeed, participation can all too easily be paid lip service in the design of programs that are otherwise entirely centralized. This issue will explore what distinguishes a rights-based understanding of participation in theory and practice. What are disputed or problematic questions relating to community participation from a rights perspective? What is the relationship between participation and access to information and accountability? Practice examples from advocacy organizations as well as programs and projects, which have incorporated participatory strategies or faced challenges relating to this dimension of a rights-based approach, are especially welcome.

Issue 11:2 Non-Discrimination and Equality
Submissions due: February 15, 2009; French and Spanish submissions: January 15, 2009.

Non-discrimination is perhaps the most fundamental principle underlying all of human rights. Under international law, health- related rights, as are all human rights, are to be guaranteed “without discrimination of any kind as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status” (International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article 2). Related to the emphasis on non-discrimination in human rights is a core notion that all people are equal in dignity and rights and that it is the obligation of the state to ensure that equality. Yet, notions of equality and non-discrimination have yet to be fully developed as they apply to health policy and programming. This issue will critically explore these concepts in theory and practice. For example, what does equality actually mean when we are rolling out or scaling up services, or determining resource allocations in health? What dimensions of inequality result in inequity? What are the grounds for advancing substantive, as opposed to formal equality, in respect of preconditions for health and access to care? Further, how is the concept of non-discrimination related to but distinct from development concepts of social exclusion?

Issue 12:1 International Assistance and Cooperation
Submissions due: August 1, 2009; French and Spanish submissions: July 1, 2009.

The ability of poor countries to realize the right to health, as well as to fulfill other human rights obligations relating to social determinants of health, must be understood within the context of the global political economy. According to Article 2 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: “Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation, especially economic and technical, to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the present Covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures” (italics added). Thus, donor countries assume human rights obligations directly and as members of international organizations, such as the World Bank, IMF and regional development banks. UN and international agencies, as well as transnational corporations under certain circumstances, may also have human rights obligations relating to health. This issue will critically explore how these international obligations are being defined and discharged, and existing mechanisms to hold donor states and other actors accountable for their human rights obligations, as well as the challenges to expanding the human rights regime to focus on actors beyond the immediate nation-state in which a violation is occurring.

All submissions are subject to initial assessment by the Managing Editor, the Editor-in-Chief or the appropriate Executive Editor to determine their suitability for consideration by Health and Human Rights. Authors will normally be informed within 2 weeks if their paper is to be rejected without review, and can otherwise track its status on the online editorial system (see “Online Submissions” section below). Papers accepted for formal review will be sent anonymously to at least two independent referees with all authorship details removed. Typically the manuscript will be reviewed within 2 to 3 months. If necessary, revised manuscripts may be returned to the initial referees, usually within 1 month. Referees and Executive Editors may request more than one revision of a manuscript, and alternative referees may also be invited to review the manuscript at any time.

To submit a manuscript to Health and Human Rights, you will need to register as an author.

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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
The submission file is in Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.

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Limitations on human rights: Are they justifiable to reduce the burden of TB in the era of MDR- and XDR-TB?

Tuberculosis, in all its forms, poses a serious, demonstrable threat to the health of countless individuals as well as to health as a public good. MDR-TB and, in particular, the emergence of XDR-TB, have re-opened the debate on the importance, and nature, of treatment supervision for basic TB control and the [...]

A human rights approach to quality of life and health: Applications to public health programming [Spanish]

We post here the original Spanish text of Dr. Armando De Negri Filho’s contribution to this issue of Health and Human Rights, titled, “El enfoque de los derechos humanos en calidad de vida y salud y su aplicación en la reestructuración programática y la reorganización de los servicios: reflexiones alrededor de una estrategia de aplicación:” El [...]

Sex and the Global Fund: How sex workers, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender people, and men who have sex with men are benefiting from the Global Fund, or not

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has allowed countries to bring their response to HIV/AIDS to an unprecedented scale, resulting in innovative projects that reach otherwise underserved communities with HIV prevention, treatment, and care. But in regions and countries where sex workers, men who have sex with men, [...]

Taming the Perfect Storm

As the nationwide crisis in the housing and credit markets unfolds, a community-based coalition of health care and social service providers, affordable housing developers, and community organizers convened on October 10, 2008 to highlight human rights-based solutions to the crisis in one of America’s hardest-hit communities, South Los Angeles. Read and hear coverage of this report [...]

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On September 17, 2008, Health and Human Rights: An International Journal celebrated its recent re-release as an open access publication with a panel discussion on “Creating on Open Forum to Advance Global Health and Social Justice.” The panel included Dr. Paul Farmer, Editor-in-chief; Dr. Jim Kim, Publisher and Director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center [...]

We couldn’t have done it without them!

Olga Shevchenko and Renée C. Fox write: From the inception of our joint fieldwork in Moscow, and throughout the drafting of this article based upon it, we repeatedly said to one another, “I couldn’t have done this without you!” More than our reciprocal enjoyment in working together was expressed in this recurrent exclamation. It also contained [...]

Building the “Knowledge Commons”

Gavin Yamey writes: Something profoundly important has happened to the journal you are reading. For a start, you no longer have to pay a subscription to read it, which means that anyone in the world who can access the Internet will be able to benefit from its scholarship. The journal will, as a result, reach new [...]

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