The Mental Health of Children and Parents Detained on Christmas Island: Secondary Analysis of an Australian Human Rights Commission Data Set

Sarah Mares Abstract This paper describes secondary analysis of previously unreported data collected during the 2014 Australian Human Rights Commission Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention. The aim was to examine the mental health of asylum-seeking parents and children during prolonged immigration detention and to consider the human rights implications of the findings. The average period of detention was seven months. Data includes 166 Kessler 10 Scales (K10) and 70…

Europe’s Shifting Response to HIV/AIDS: From Human Rights to Risk Management

Julia Smith Abstract Despite a history of championing HIV/AIDS as a human rights issue, and a rhetorical commitment to health as a human right, European states and institutions have shifted from a rights-based response to a risk management approach to HIV/AIDS since the economic recession of 2008. An interdisciplinary perspective is applied to analyze health policy changes at the national, regional, and global levels by drawing on data from key…

Three Case Studies in Making Fair Choices on the Path to Universal Health Coverage

Alex Voorhoeve, Tessa T.T. Edejer, Lydia Kapiriri, Ole F. Norheim, James Snowden, Olivier Basenya, Dorjsuren Bayarsaikhan, Ikram Chentaf, Nir Eyal, Amanda Folsom, Rozita Halina Tun Hussein, Cristian Morales, Florian Ostmann, Trygve Ottersen, Phusit Prakongsai, Carla Saenz, Karima Saleh, Angkana Sommanustweechai, Daniel Wikler, and Afisah Zakariah Abstract The goal of achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) can generally be realized only in stages. Moreover, resource, capacity, and political constraints mean governments often…

Book review: Rethinking Health and Human Rights through Emancipatory Frameworks around Dignity and Well-being

Beatriz Galli Power, Suffering, and the Struggle for Dignity, by Alicia Ely Yamin, Foreword by Paul Farmer, published by University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016 Alicia Ely Yamin’s book Power, Suffering, and the Struggle for Dignity is necessary reading for advocates, practitioners, and students from any discipline interested in understanding the intersection between human rights and health. It underlines the importance of applying a rights-based framework to health systems, policies, and laws…

Human Rights Law and Abortion in El Salvador

Alia Januwalla Congratulations to Alia Januwalla – this essay is a winner in the Harvard FXB Health and Human Rights Consortium Student Essay Competition 2016. Alia Januwalla, MPH, is a student of Health Promotion at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Canada. Introduction In 2013, a pregnant woman named Beatriz was denied the right to a medical abortion by El Salvador’s highest supreme court.1 Beatriz had…

To Choose Peace is to Choose Health

Donna Perry, Christian Guillermet Fernández, and David Fernández Puyana The Declaration on the Right to Peace was adopted by the UN Human Rights Council on 1 July 2016. Ambassador Christian Guillermet of Costa Rica had led the three years of work in developing this Declaration, with support from the Fundación Paz sin Fronteras and other civil society organizations. The Declaration unequivocally recalls the three main pillars of the UN: “Everyone…

Corruption, Proportionality, and their Challenges

Michael Kirby   Health and Human Rights 18/1 Published June 2016 The Hon. Michael Kirby AC CMG delivered this Franz-Hermann Brüner lecture at the 16th Conference of International Investigators, in Montreux, Switzerland, on September 30, 2015. Kirby has been a Member of the Pacific Friends of the Global Fund since 2007 and is a Member of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High–Level Panel on Access to Essential Medicines (2015-2016). He was Justice…

Double Standards in Global Health: Medicine, Human Rights Law, and Multidrug-Resistant TB Treatment Policy

Thomas Nicholson, Catherine Admay, Aaron Shakow, and Salmaan Keshavjee  Abstract The human rights arguments that underpinned the fight against HIV over the last three decades were poised, but ultimately failed, to provide a similar foundation for success against multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and other diseases of the poor. With more than 1.5 million deaths since 2000 attributed to strains of MDR-TB, and with half a million new, and mostly untreated, MDR-TB…