Lucía Berro Pizzarossa, Michelle Maziwisa, and Ebenezer Durojaye Abstract Self-managed abortion holds particular promise for revolutionizing people’s access to quality reproductive care in Africa, where the burden of abortion-related mortality is the highest globally and where abortion remains criminalized, in violation of various internationally and regionally recognized human rights. Increasingly safe and effective, self-managed medication abortion is still subject to many restrictions, including criminal laws, across the continent. Drawing on…
Does New Mental Health Legislation in Victoria, Australia, Advance Human Rights?
Chris Maylea Abstract In introducing the Mental Health and Wellbeing Bill of 2022 into Parliament in Victoria, Australia, the state government claimed that the new legislation “delivers on the vision for rights-based mental health and wellbeing laws.” This paper examines the new legislation in light of both local human rights legislation and international human rights law. Drawing primarily on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities…
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STUDENT ESSAY No Dignity on the Floor: A Human Rights Argument for Adult-Sized Changing Tables in Public Restrooms in the United States
Geffen Treiman Abstract Many individuals with disabilities utilize adult-sized changing tables to take care of their toileting needs with the help of a caregiver.[1] These tables are not explicitly required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and no legal case in the United States has yet addressed whether the ADA requires public restrooms to have adult changing tables.[2] This paper draws on an analysis of op-eds and news articles…
STUDENT ESSAY: Is Compulsory COVID-19 Vaccination a Violation of Human Rights?
Aaron Chia In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK Government passed the Coronavirus Act 2020 (CA), which implemented a number of emergency powers, allowing public officials to take action in specific situations in order to contain and slow down the spread of the virus as well as ease the burden on frontline staff.[1] Examples of these emergency powers include: the capability for public officials to test, isolate, and detain…
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COVID-19 Clinical Bias, Persons with Disabilities, and Human Rights
Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp 285 – 290 PDF Omar Sultan Haque and Michael Ashley Stein Persons with disabilities have historically been discriminated against by society, including fulfilment of the right to equal access to health care.[1] The more egregious practices, historically as well as today, include outright denials of access to health care, involuntary sterilization, forced institutionalization, coerced treatment, and substituted decision-making.[2] Discrimination also occurs by more insidious practices.…
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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…
UHC2030’s Contributions to Global Health Governance that Advance the Right to Health Care: A Preliminary Assessment
PDF Rachel Hammonds, Gorik Ooms, Moses Mulumba, and Allan Maleche Abstract The September 2019 United Nations High Level Meeting on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) aims to mobilize top-level political support for action on UHC to advance the health Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). A driving force behind this meeting is the “UHC Movement,” led by UHC2030, which focuses on coordinating and amplifying efforts by WHO, the World Bank, civil society, and the…
PERSPECTIVE Universal Health Coverage: Are We Losing Our Way on Women’s and Children’s Health?
PDF Flavia Bustreo and Curtis Doebbler Our children are our future and one of the basic responsibilities is to care for them in the best and most compassionate manner possible.—Nelson Mandela[1] If women are denied a chance to develop their full human potential, including their potential to lead healthier and at least somewhat happier lives, is society as a whole really healthy? —Dr. Margaret Chan[2] This commentary argues that current…
Health and Human Rights’ Past: Patinating Law’s Contribution
PDF Thérèse Murphy Abstract This article argues that to be able to look forward, lawyers within the health and human rights movement need to do more looking back. It is prompted by a simple question: do we have a history of health and human rights law and lawyering? Finding nothing that qualifies, the article asks how we might fill that gap. Focusing on international human rights law, it prescribes histories…
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Have Reforms Reconciled Health Rights Litigation and Priority Setting in Costa Rica?
PDF Alessandro Luciano and Alex Voorhoeve Abstract The experience of Costa Rica highlights the potential for conflicts between the right to health and fair priority setting. For example, one study found that most favorable rulings by the Costa Rican constitutional court concerning claims for medications under the right to health were either for experimental treatments or for medicines that should have low priority based on health gain per unit of…