Posted on

An Explicit Right to Abortion is Needed in International Human Rights Law

Audrey Chapman Access to sexual and reproductive health care is a fundamental right that all states must respect, protect, and fulfil, and is articulated in regional and international treaties including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). But one year on from the US…

Continue reading “An Explicit Right to Abortion is Needed in International Human Rights Law”

Posted on

UN Expert Addresses Privacy and Health Rights Concerns in Digital Technology 

Alexandrine Pirlot de Corbion and Timothy Wafula Digital technology and its benefits and risks to the right to health are the focus of the latest report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health. Tlaleng Mofokeng, the Special Rapporteur, is presenting her thematic report “Digital innovation, technologies and the right to health” to the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday 22 June, 2023. We highlight four issues…

Continue reading “UN Expert Addresses Privacy and Health Rights Concerns in Digital Technology “

Posted on

Wëlamàlsëwakàn (Good Health): Reimagining the Right to Health through Lenape Epistemologies

Vol 25/1, 2023, pp. 207-212  PDF PERSPECTIVE A. Kayum Ahmed, Joe Baker, and Hadrien Coumans Introduction Human rights have historically advanced an anthropocentric world view that reinforces the right to health of human beings, disconnected from the health of nonhuman nature and what the Lenape people refer to as Kahèsëna Hàki (Mother Earth).[1] For the Lenape and other American Indian nations, as well as many Indigenous communities globally, the border…

Continue reading “Wëlamàlsëwakàn (Good Health): Reimagining the Right to Health through Lenape Epistemologies”

Posted on

Challenging the US Supreme Court’s Majority Ruling on Roe v. Wade at the International Human Rights Level

Vol 25/1, 2023, pp. 195-206  PDF PERSPECTIVE Marge Berer Abstract This paper proposes that US human rights experts and abortion rights advocates challenge the striking down of Roe v. Wade in June 2022 by the majority of US Supreme Court justices because of the multiple human rights violations it has engendered. The paper has three parts. The first part summarizes the compelling response of the three dissenting Supreme Court justices…

Continue reading “Challenging the US Supreme Court’s Majority Ruling on Roe v. Wade at the International Human Rights Level”

Posted on

Five Lessons for Advancing Maternal Health Rights in an Age of Neoliberal Globalization and Conservative Backlash

Vol 25/1, 2023, pp. 185-194   PDF Alicia Ely Yamin Abstract After considerable progress in recent decades, maternal mortality and morbidity (MMM) either stagnated or worsened in most regions of the globe between 2016 and 2020. The world should be outraged given that we have known the key interventions necessary for preventing MMM for over three-quarters of a century. Since the 1990s, human rights advocacy on MMM has gained crucial ground,…

Continue reading “Five Lessons for Advancing Maternal Health Rights in an Age of Neoliberal Globalization and Conservative Backlash”

Posted on

Scientific Awakening: Violation of Human Rights of Academic Scholars and Healthcare Professionals in Iran

Mahtab Jafari and Parya Saberi Is it the obligation of the scientific community to speak up against the violation of human rights of fellow scientists and healthcare professionals? We believe it is.[1] We see it as a moral imperative and the absolute responsibility of any scientist to amplify the voices of scientists who are subjected to human rights violations. A number of editorials and letters published by Iranian scholars outside…

Continue reading “Scientific Awakening: Violation of Human Rights of Academic Scholars and Healthcare Professionals in Iran”

Posted on

Women’s Health Rights can Guide International Climate Litigation: KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland before the European Court of Human Rights

Hannah van Kolfschooten and Angela Hefti All over the world, individuals are taking governments to court for their role in climate change, or rather, their “climate inaction”. The 2022 Global Trends in Climate Change Litigation Policy Report shows that strategic litigation cases to enforce climate laws and policies have doubled since 2015. On 29 March 2023, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) heard its first…

Continue reading “Women’s Health Rights can Guide International Climate Litigation: KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland before the European Court of Human Rights”

Posted on

Self-Managed Abortion in Africa: The Decriminalization Imperative in Regional Human Rights Standards

Vol 25/1, 2023, pp. 171-183  PDF Lucía Berro Pizzarossa, Michelle Maziwisa, and Ebenezer Durojaye Abstract Self-managed abortion holds particular promise for revolutionizing people’s access to quality reproductive care in Africa, where the burden of abortion-related mortality is the highest globally and where abortion remains criminalized, in violation of various internationally and regionally recognized human rights. Increasingly safe and effective, self-managed medication abortion is still subject to many restrictions, including criminal…

Continue reading “Self-Managed Abortion in Africa: The Decriminalization Imperative in Regional Human Rights Standards”

Posted on

Women’s Health and Rights: Time to Recommit

Flavia Bustreo and Rajat Khosla According to the recently released Trends in Maternal Mortality 2000 to 2020, global progress in reducing maternal mortality stagnated between 2000-2015 and worsened in some regions between 2016 and 2020.[1] Overall only 69 countries show a reduction in the Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) when comparing 2020 with 2000 data.[2] Worldwide in 2020 223 maternal deaths occurred per 100,000 livebirths, a rate equal to the death…

Continue reading “Women’s Health and Rights: Time to Recommit”

Posted on

It Is Time to Abolish the Death Penalty for People with Intellectual Disabilities

Gautam Gulati and Brendan D. Kelly   On 5 October 2021, Ernest L. Johnson, a 61-year-old man, was executed in Missouri, United States. Johnson’s crime was heinous: in 1994 he killed three people in a convenience store. No words can describe the consequences of such an act: three lives lost, many more lives shattered, and psychological wounds that endure to this day. But Johnson had fetal alcohol syndrome and an…

Continue reading “It Is Time to Abolish the Death Penalty for People with Intellectual Disabilities”