PERSPECTIVE WHO’s QualityRights Initiative: Transforming Services and Promoting Rights in Mental Health

Volume 22/1, June 2020, pp 69 – 76 PDF Michelle Funk and Natalie Drew Bold This perspective essay introduces the World Health Organization’s QualityRights initiative, which uses a multicomponent framework and strategies to promote mental health systems, services, and practices that prioritize respect for human rights, in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).[1] It describes how the initiative is working to provide…

Operationalizing a Human Rights-Based Approach to Address Mistreatment against Women during Childbirth

Volume 22/1, June 2020, pp 251 – 264 PDF Christina Zampas, Avni Amin, Lucinda O’Hanlon, Alisha Bjerregaard, Hedieh Mehrtash, Rajat Khosla, and Özge Tunçalp Abstract A growing body of evidence reveals that the mistreatment of pregnant women during facility-based childbirth is occurring across the globe. As human rights bodies have increasingly recognized, numerous human rights are implicated in the context of mistreatment of women in childbirth, including the rights to…

Pandemic Stresses the Human Rights Imperatives of Tackling HIV and Hepatitis in Middle East and North African Prisons

Marie Claire Van Hout and Elie Aaraj It is imperative that governments and prison authorities in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region accept the presence of sexual and drug related virus transmission in prisons and use evidence-based approaches of harm reduction (HR) to tackle the spread of disease among prisoners and on their return to communities.[1] This imperative coincides with the COVID-19 pandemic, and the instigation by many…

Understanding US Immigration Detention: Reaffirming Rights and Addressing Social-Structural Determinants of Health

Volume 22/1, June 2020, pp 187 – 198 PDF Altaf Saadi, Maria-Elena De Trinidad Young, Caitlin Patler, Jeremias Leonel Estrada, and Homer Venters Abstract A crisis of mass immigration detention exists in the United States, which is home to the world’s largest immigration detention system. The immigration detention system is legally classified as civil, rather than criminal, and therefore non-punitive. Yet it mimics the criminal incarceration system and holds detained…

Safer Viewing: A Study of Secondary Trauma Mitigation Techniques in Open Source Investigations

Volume 22/1, June 2020, pp 293 – 204 PDF Elise Baker, Eric Stover, Rohini Haar, Andrea Lampros, and Alexa Koenig Abstract Human rights investigators often review graphic imagery of potential war crimes and human rights abuses while conducting open source investigations. As a result, they are at risk of developing secondary trauma, a condition that can produce a range of cognitive and behavioral consequences, including elevated anxiety and distress, depression,…

Beyond the Pragmatic Definition? The Right to Non-discrimination of Persons with Disabilities in the Context of Coercive Interventions

Volume 22/1, June 2020, pp 279 – 292 PDF Sándor Gurbai Abstract According to a longstanding definition of non-discrimination, differential treatment does not constitute discrimination if the purpose or effect of the differential treatment is to achieve a legitimate aim and if the differential treatment can be objectively and reasonably justified. This characterization reflects what Wouter Vandenhole has described as the “widely-used pragmatic definition of discrimination.” In mental health policy,…

Global Health in the Age of COVID-19: Responsive Health Systems Through a Right to Health Fund

Volume 22/1, June 2020, pp 199 – 2908 PDF Eric A. Friedman, Lawrence O. Gostin, Allan Maleche, Alessandra Nilo, Fogue Foguito, Umunyana Rugege, Sasha Stevenson, Githinji Gitahi, Ana Lorena Ruano, Michele Barry, Sara Hossain, Franciscka Lucien, Itai Rusike, Martin Hevia, Ala Alwan, Edwin Cameron, Paul Farmer, Walter Flores, Adila Hassim, Rosemary Mburu, Joia Mukherjee, Moses Mulumba, Dainius Puras, and Mirta Roses Periago Abstract We propose that a Right to Health…