Health and Human Rights News

Week ending 31 May 2025

Financial commitments and new campaigns at WHA

At this year’s World Health Assembly member states not only committed to the landmark Pandemic Agreement but also approved significant increases in assessed contributions to the World Health Organization. Resolutions and targets were adopted that focused on air pollution, rare diseases, social connection, and lung and kidney health, along with new campaigns for cervical cancer elimination and prematurity awareness.

Africa and CDC expand WHO partnerships …

The African Union and WHO have renewed their strategic partnership, a “joint commitment to advancing health security, universal health coverage, and sustainable development across the African continent at a time of unprecedented financial challenges in the global health landscape.” In another step towards more resilient and secure health infrastructure in Africa, WHO, Africa CDC, the Robert Koch Institute, and Canadian and UK governments announced that Rwanda would be joining the Health and Security Partnership to Strengthen Disease Surveillance in Africa (HSPA).

… but Argentina withdraws

Argentina announced it had ratified its decision to withdraw from WHO during US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s visit to Buenos Aires. President Javier Milei said “WHO’s prescriptions do not work because they are not based on science but on political interests and bureaucratic structures that refuse to review their own mistakes.” Milei first announced that Argentina would exit the organization in February this year, following the lead of President Trump in January.

See also:

Health and Human Rights: Territories in Dispute, Jacqueline Pitanguy, Fight for Rights Viewpoint series, 29 May 2025

Federal scientists may face publishing ban…

In a recent podcast, US Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr (RFK) called multiple leading medical journals, including the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, and JAMA, “corrupt” and threatened that unless, “they change dramatically, we are going to stop NIH scientists from publishing in them and we’re going to create our own journals in-house.” Kennedy has also accused the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as “sock puppets” for the pharmaceutical industry. Adam Gaffney, a public health researcher at Harvard Medical School, told the Washington Post: “Banning NIH-funded researchers from publishing in leading medical journals and requiring them to publish only in journals that carry the RFK Jr seal of approval would delegitimize taxpayer-funded research.”

See also:

Free Speech, the Right to Health, and Genocide, Joseph J. Amon, Editorial, Vol 27/1, 2025

… CDC upends political vaccine advice

Soon after RFK announced that the United States would remove the COVID-19 booster shot from the immunization schedule for healthy children and pregnant women, CDC updated advice that largely countered RFK’s new policy. COVID shots remain on the schedule for healthy children 6 months to 17 years old, provided the child’s doctor agrees. The shots are available to about 38 million low-income children who rely on the Vaccines for Children program.

US Congress allows toxic emissions

The US Congress has partially reversed environmental legislation that was designed to control and reduce “super-toxic” emissions, such as lead compounds, arsenic, mercury and benzene, with strict rules on industrial facilities. Human Rights Watch says that such a rollback “will likely cause substantial harm to the health of people in vulnerable communities and set back broader progress towards realizing a healthier environment for all.”

US ignores human rights in proposed DRC-Rwanda peace deal

Amidst escalating conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the US State Department’s “declaration of principles” guiding a peace accord between the DRC and Rwanda has been criticized for being “silent on human rights, reparations, and accountability”. Noting widespread conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence in eastern DRC, Physicians for Human Rights called on parties to the conflict, and the United States as a facilitator, to ensure justice for the victims and restore access to essential health services. A new investigation conducted by Amnesty International has revealed that the Rwandan-backed M23 rebels continue to kill and torture civilians.

See also:

Goma Under Siege: A Humanitarian and Health Catastrophe, Viewpoint, Patrick Ndeba, Faraan O. Rahim, Meriem Boukaabar, et al, 18 May 2025

Reclaiming Sexual and Reproductive Rights Through a Decolonial Lens, Fight for Rights Viewpoint, Tlaleng Mofokeng, 26 May 2025

Türk: Use human rights law to regulate AI

“AI tools have the power to help end extreme hunger and build more sustainable development,” said UN High Commissioner Volker Türk in his address to the Doha International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights. But he warned that although AI can broaden access to quality medical care and support scientific research, it can add to digital divides, mislead populations, and infringe upon privacy. He observed that “strict regulation and safety standards are placed on cars, on medicines, on air traffic and even on fast food, the development and deployment of AI are still largely left to the businesses that produce it, and the clients they serve. This threatens us all.” He urged States to implement the Global Digital Compact, agreed last year, and commits to governance based on human rights.

See also:

Special Section on Big Data, Technology, Artificial Intelligence and the Right to Health, Health and Human Rights, December 2020

UN experts alarmed by detention of Azerbaijani human rights defender

UN experts including Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Tlaleng Mofokeng, have called on Azerbaijan to end retaliation against human rights defenders, voicing concern over the year-long detention of Anar Mammadli. The Chair of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre (EMDS) was detained in April 2024 after the EMDS reported on election irregularities in February 2024. The experts urged Azerbaijan to respect due process and ensure Mammadli’s rights and health care, affirming that “defending human rights should never be considered a crime.”

HIV report comes at critical moment

The UN Secretary-General António Guterres will present his report on HIV, titled The Urgency of Now: AIDS at a Crossroads, to the United Nations General Assembly on 5 June. The report assesses global progress on targets and commitments in the global effort to end AIDS as a public health threat. The UN concedes that with recent challenges and the fragility of the HIV response, the world is falling behind in achieving the 2025 HIV targets. Obstacles to accessing treatment, insufficient prevention programming, a failure to adequately support the work of communities, rising inequalities and a lack of political will and financial support threaten the global response.

See also:

Enforceable Commitments to Global Health Needed to Fulfill Rights, Fight for Rights Viewpoint, Moses Mulumba, Jessica Oga, Juliana Nantaba, and Ana Lorena Ruano, 5 March 2025