Category: Perspectives

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…

Continue reading “UHC2030’s Contributions to Global Health Governance that Advance the Right to Health Care: A Preliminary Assessment”

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…

Continue reading “PERSPECTIVE Universal Health Coverage: Are We Losing Our Way on Women’s and Children’s Health?”

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…

Continue reading “Health and Human Rights’ Past: Patinating Law’s Contribution”

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…

Continue reading “Have Reforms Reconciled Health Rights Litigation and Priority Setting in Costa Rica?”

PDF Madison B. Sharp*, Andrew R. Milewski*, Claire Lamneck, and Katherine McKenzie Abstract Individuals applying for asylum must demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution. By documenting signs of torture and other forms of abuse, medical evaluations can provide forensic evidence to support asylum claims. The backlog of pending immigration cases in the United States recently exceeded one million. Student-run asylum medicine clinics conduct forensic evaluations to assist in the asylum…

Continue reading “Evaluating the Impact of Student-run Asylum Clinics in the US from 2016–2018”

PDF Liv Tønnessen and Samia Al-Nagar Abstract In Sudan’s Islamist state, abortion is politicized through its association with illegal pregnancy. Fornication is a crime against God punishable with 100 lashes, and pregnancy outside a marriage contract constitutes sufficient evidence of a woman’s immorality. This enables a strong link between the crime of fornication and the crime of illegal abortion, to the extent that our interviewees often conflate the two in…

Continue reading “The Politicization of Abortion and Hippocratic Disobedience in Islamist Sudan”

PDF Caroline H. Voyles and Mariana Chilton Abstract The “gay propaganda law”—criminalizing public messaging supporting sexual and gender minority (SGM) communities in the presence of youth—implemented within Russia in 2013 has been widely criticized by those in the international field of human rights, yet remains in effect. Although the law is supposedly protecting the well-being of children, it is likely detrimental to youth who may be sexual or gender minorities.…

Continue reading “Respect, Protect, and Fulfill or Reject, Neglect, and Regress? Children’s Rights in the Time of the Russian “Gay Propaganda Law””