Volume 24/2, December 2022, pp. 191-204 | PDF Katrina Perehudoff and Jennifer Sellin Abstract Facing the unmet need for new, affordable medicines for public health crises, how should states’ duty to ensure that everyone shares in the benefits of science be understood in relation to pandemic vaccine supply, and how has the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights monitored the implementation of this right? In this paper,…
Improving Access to COVID-19 Vaccines: An Analysis of TRIPS Waiver Discourse among WTO Members, Civil Society Organizations, and Pharmaceutical Industry Stakeholders
Volume 24/2, December 2022, pp. 159-175 | PDF Jillian Kohler, Anna Wong, and Lauren Tailor Abstract Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, international access to COVID-19 vaccines and other health technologies has remained highly asymmetric. This inequity has had a particularly deleterious impact on low- and middle-income countries, engaging concerns about the human rights to health and to the equal enjoyment of the benefits of scientific progress enshrined under articles 12 and…
A Needle in a Haystack? Human Rights Framing at the World Trade Organization for Access to COVID-19 Vaccines
Volume 24/2, December 2022, pp. 141-157 | PDF Katrina Perehudoff, Heba Qazilbash, and Kai Figueras de Vries Abstract How and why is implicit and explicit human rights language used by World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiators in debates about intellectual property, know-how, and technology needed to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines, and how do these findings compare with negotiators’ human rights framing in 2001? Sampling 26 WTO members and two groups of members,…
An Inquiry into State Agreement and Practice on the International Law Status of the Human Right to Medicines
Volume 24/2, December 2022, pp. 125-140 | PDF Lisa Forman, Basema Al-Alami, and Kaitlin Fajber Abstract Global disparities in access to COVID-19 vaccines have brought back into focus questions about whether the right to medicines has assumed any level of binding legality within international law. In this paper, we attempt to answer this question by considering if there is evidence of subsequent state agreement and practice to read the right…
EDITORIAL Interrogating the Role of Human Rights in Remedying Global Inequities in Access to COVID-19 Vaccines
Volume 24/2, December 2022, pp. 121-124 | PDF Lisa Forman, Carlos Correa, and Katrina Perehudoff Introduction Access to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines is central to controlling the global COVID-19 pandemic. It is also an essential element of advancing universal health coverage under the Sustainable Development Goals, and it is essential to realizing a range of human rights related to health. Yet disparities in access to COVID-19 vaccines in low…
VIRTUAL ROUNDTABLE Impact of Human Rights Council Reports on Mental Health
Volume 24/2, December 2022, pp. 85-99 | PDF Carmel Williams and Audrey Chapman Introduction In June 2017, Dainius Pūras, the former United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on the right to physical and mental health, presented a landmark report to the Human Rights Council calling for a paradigm shift in mental health to models centering on rights-based care and support.[1] The report called on states and all stakeholders…
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The Role of Civil Society in Mobilizing Human Rights Struggles for Essential Medicines: A Critique from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19
Volume 24/2, December 2022, pp. 177-189 | PDF Sharifah Sekalala and Belinda Rawson Abstract In this paper, we explore the strategies utilized by civil society organizations to improve access to medicines during the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 health crises. In particular, we seek to illuminate why some of the successful approaches for increasing access to antiretrovirals for HIV/AIDS in the early 2000s failed in creating equitable global access to COVID-19 vaccines.…
Gender-Based Violence Is a Human Rights Violation: Are Donors Responding Adequately? What a Decade of Donor Interventions in Colombia, Kenya, and Uganda Reveals
Volume 24/2, December 2022, pp. 29-45 | PDF Clarisa Bencomo, Emily Battistini, and Terry McGovern Abstract Gender-based violence (GBV) is a violation of human rights and must be addressed as such. This paper examines whether donor practices align with a rights-based approach, using data from our comprehensive study of foreign funding flows related to GBV in Colombia, Kenya, and Uganda from 2010 to 2020. By analyzing data from 1,180 grants—and…
STUDENT ESSAY Niger’s Approach to Child Marriage: A Violation of Children’s Right to Health?
Volume 24/2, December 2022, pp. 101-109 | PDF Caroline Crawford Child marriage is a global challenge in need of greater attention. According to reports by UNICEF, 650 million girls and women alive today were married as children.[1] The global rate of child marriage still remains high, with data suggesting that over 12 million girls under 18 years are married every year.[2] With close links to high rates of adolescent pregnancy,…
Menstruation, Myopia, and Marginalization: Advancing Menstrual Policies to “Keep Girls in School” at the Risk of Exacerbating Inequalities
Volume 24/2, December 2022, pp. 13-28 | PDF Nay Alhelou, Purvaja S. Kavattur, Mary M. Olson, Lillian Rountree, and Inga T. Winkler Abstract As countries across the world adopt policies addressing menstruation, it is imperative to identify who benefits from such policies and to understand the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. We examine such policies through the lens of human rights, as a framework that demands addressing marginalization, ensuring substantive…