Blogs

Sara L.M. Davis The International AIDS Conference opens today in Amsterdam, with up to 19,000 scientists, activists, and officials coming together from around the world. The world has come a long way since the last time the meeting took place here, in…

By Fran Quigley Frustration over Congress’s failure to reduce prescription drug prices is bringing civil society organizations together. Drug prices are continuing to increase far above rates of inflation, year after year, and more than 80% of…

By Sara L.M. Davis and Allan Maleche Hands off our fingerprints! That was the message from Kenyan civil society activists who blocked the use of biometric data, such as fingerprints or iris scans, in a government study of HIV. This case study of…

By Fran Quigley Photo credit: Catherine Tomlinson Access to essential medicines is a well-established component of the human right to health, but it is a right that remains elusive for millions of people across the globe. The United Nations…

Rachel Hall-Clifford When I began working as a medical anthropologist on childhood illness in Guatemala over a decade ago, I wanted to explore what the right to health meant for communities targeted by global health initiatives and how local people…

Joseph J. Amon and Nina Sun The US State Department released its annual report on human rights on 20 April. The first report of the Trump administration garnered headlines because it stripped all references to reproductive rights, eliminating a…

Patrick Eba Many commentators in the 1980s dismissed the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Charter) as “a false dawn for the promotion and protection of human rights in Africa”.[1] This pessimism arose from the African Charter’s…

by Fifa Rahman and Fran Quigley In his 2018 State of the Union address US President Donald Trump issued yet another vow to address his country’s crisis in prescription drug pricing, where fast-climbing costs are causing one in four Americans to…

Benjamin Mason Meier, Rebekah Thomas, and Kent Buse UNAIDS World AIDS Day launch 2017 The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) is focusing its 2017 World AIDS Day campaign on the right to health. This groundbreaking campaign, My…

Fran Quigley It was at a street protest for access to medicines when Priti Krishtel and Tahir Amin realized that they needed to go beyond street protests. Krishtel and Amin were both young lawyers who had walked away from lucrative law firm jobs,…