Amanda M. Klasing, P. Scott Moses, and Margaret L. Satterthwaite Health and Human Rights 13/1 Published June 2011 Abstract This article provides results from an online survey of humanitarian workers and volunteers that was conducted in May and June 2010. The purpose of the survey was to understand how the humanitarian aid system adopts or incorporates human rights into its post-natural disaster work and metrics. Data collected from Haiti suggest…
Intersection 4: Building health and human rights into communities
Health and Human Rights 13/1 Published June 2011 The importance of creating a “culture of human rights” at the community level is typically discussed in relation to warfare and other forms of official violence. Only rarely do health and other key social and economic rights come into view. Yet it seems clear that commitment by national politicians—without which health will not be prioritized over other pressing individual or social imperatives—depends…
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Intersection 3: Health financing and other barriers to universal access
Health and Human Rights 13/1 Published June 2011 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims that everyone has the right to “a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances…
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Intersection 2: Non-communicable diseases and global health equity
Health and Human Rights 13/1 Published June 2011 As recently as 1990, most illness worldwide was attributed to pneumonia, diarrheal disease, and perinatal infection. It is now recognized that by 2020, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) will be responsible for 60% of sicknesses worldwide and seven deaths in every ten. Most will be in the developing world. For governments in high- and middle-income countries, which are feeling the budgetary effects of aging…
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Intersection 1: Rights and responsibilities amid climate change and environmental degradation
Health and Human Rights 13/1 Published June 2011 The first decade of the 21st century has seen devastating cyclones, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and extreme temperatures. These natural phenomena continue to influence the lives of people around the world, not only through their immediate consequences for population morbidity and mortality, but even more so through displacement, disenfranchisement, and deprivation. The people who suffer most are often those who were most…
Editorial: Intersections of health and human rights
Health and Human Rights 13/1 Published June 2011 Shortly before his death, Jonathan Mann, the founding editor of this journal, imagined its major fields of inquiry as two perpendicular axes describing different dimensions of human well-being. The horizontal axis ranged from medicine, with its focus on individual suffering and intervention, to public health, with its focus on populations. The vertical axis began with ethics, concerned with treatment and behavior…
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