Namusobya Salima Published September 23, 2014 Strategic litigation in response to human rights violations is an increasing practice around the world.[1] Health rights litigation is undertaken to give effect to the right to the highest attainable standard of health and associated rights, such as the right to equality and non-discrimination, patients’ rights, and the right to a remedy.[2] While information is crucial to the success of any health litigation case…
In Memoriam: Giulia Tamayo, 1958-2014
Alicia Ely Yamin Health and Human Rights 2014, 16/2 This issue of Health and Human Rights is dedicated to the memory of Giulia Tamayo. In the course of preparing this special issue for publication, the world lost a tireless fighter for the causes of human rights, health rights, and social justice in the world. Giulia Tamayo was a beloved friend and mentor, as well as an inspiration. I first met…
Law, Human Rights, and Health Databases: A Roundtable Discussion
By Joseph J. Amon Published September 11, 2014 Three databases have launched in recent years that provide information on law, human rights, and health. LawAtlas, the Global Health and Human Rights database, and the Doctors Who Torture Accountability Project each seek to organize and put online legal information relevant for policy analysis, human rights research, and advocacy. To explore the nature of each project, the motivation behind it, and what…
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Book Brief – How Human Rights Can Build Haiti: Activists, Lawyers, and the Grassroots Campaign
How Human Rights Can Build Haiti: Activists, Lawyers, and the Grassroots Campaign Fran Quigley Vanderbilt University Press (forthcoming September 2014) ISBN: 978-0-8265-4993-1 (cloth $35.00) 240 pages By Health and Human Rights editorial intern Laura Faas How Human Rights Can Build Haiti: Activists, Lawyers, and the Grassroots Campaign presents the legal and grassroots battles in Haiti as human rights-based strategies that are both practical and attainable in the fight for social justice.…
New Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health Assumes Duties
Posted September 4, 2014 The new Special Rapporteur on the human right to health assumed his duties on August 1. Selected over the summer by the Human Rights Council, Dr. Dainius Pūras of Lithuania is the third individual to occupy the honorary position, the duties of which consist of ongoing monitoring of the status of the right to health throughout the world. Pūras has specialized in child rights and mental…
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WHO Climate Change Conference: Immediate Health Benefits Possible
Posted September 2, 2014 The first-ever global conference on health and climate change was hosted by WHO in Geneva from August 27-29. More than 300 invited participants attended the three-day forum, including UN agency heads, government officials, health and climate experts, and NGO representatives. In her opening remarks, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said, “The evidence is overwhelming: climate change endangers human health. Solutions exist and we need to act decisively to…
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O’Neill Center Colloquium: The West African Ebola Epidemic
The O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, a member of the Health and Human Rights Consortium, invites you to a colloquium event: The West African Ebola Epidemic: How Can It Be Contained and How Can We Prevent the Next One? Wednesday, September 3, 2014 1:20 – 3:20 p.m. Georgetown University Law Center Faculty Dining Room, Hotung Room 2001 550 First Street, NW Washington, DC 20001 MODERATORS Lawrence O. Gostin, University…
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HHR Board Member Michael Kirby Delivers Two Lectures on HIV/AIDS and the Right to Health
In an August 11 article in The Age Elizabeth Brumby (@LizBrumby) outlines two lectures on health and human rights from the Honorable Michael Kirby, a former justice of the High Court of Australia and a member of the Health and Human Rights editorial board. In the first – the Jonathan Mann memorial lecture at the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne – Kirby discussed the negative effects of punitive laws on…
Book Brief – When People Come First: Critical Studies in Global Health
When People Come First: Critical Studies in Global Health Edited by João Biehl & Adriana Petryna Princeton University Press (July 2013) Hardcover ISBN: 9780691157382 ($75.00) Paperback ISBN: 9780691157399 ($29.95) 456 pages Reviewed by HHR editorial intern Laura Faas In When People Come First, João Biehl and Adriana Petryna note that “magic-bullet approaches” to global health, which target one specific disease, are limited because they overlook the societal, political,…
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Times Review: Lawrence Gostin’s “Global Health Law”
HHR contributor Juliet Sorensen reviews Lawrence O. Gostin’s Global Health Law in today’s Times Higher Education. Gostin is on the steering committee for the recently launched Framework Convention on Global Health, and is an HHR board member. In her review, Sorensen writes that Gostin “exhorts individual nations and the international community to apply meaningful governance standards to global health even as the right to health continues to evolve and gain acceptance.” She notes…
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