Benjamin K. Wagner The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the monitoring body of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), gave its opinion in May 2015 on a case brought by a New Zealand national living and working in the Republic of Korea as a teacher of English as a foreign language.[1] The CERD found that the South Korean…
COVID-19 and the Law: Framing Healthcare Worker Risks as Women’s Rights Violations
Kristin Bergtora Sandvik Today, public health is ‘delivered by women and led by men’, with a glaring absence of women and nurses at the decision making table.[1] Globally, though women only make up 25% of those in healthcare leadership they make up the majority of healthcare workers (70%) and nurses (90%).[2] This exclusion skews the agendas on health so the gender dimensions of research, diagnosis, treatment, and care are rendered…
World AIDS Day 2020: Further Shifting the Paradigm to Transform the HIV Response
Courtenay Sprague The “HIV/AIDS pandemic has marked all of our lives, and I suspect we share a sense that it has led us and the world forward in some way,” wrote the late Dr Jonathan Mann, health and human rights luminary, field-builder, and founder of the Health and Human Rights Journal.[1] In 1996, he posed the question, “What are the transformative possibilities of the AIDS pandemic?”[2] Every year December 1…
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Housing Evictions, Human Rights, and the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
Patrick Leisure The COVID-19 pandemic has starkly highlighted the magnitude of the eviction crisis facing many tenants in the United States.[1] Troublingly, recent research shows the eviction crisis largely falls along racial lines. One study illustrated that “people of color, particularly black and latinx people, constitute approximately 80% of people facing eviction.”[2] Another revealed that, controlling for education, Black households are more than twice as likely to be evicted than…
Ameliorating COVID-19’s Disproportionate Impact on Black and Hispanic Communities: Proposed Policy Initiatives for the United States
Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp 329 – 332 PDF Audrey Chapman The COVID-19 epidemic has shone a bright light on structural racism in US society and on the inadequacies of a health care system that has significantly disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities while giving preference to white Americans.[1] Research and disease surveillance have documented the disproportionate impact of the virus on the Black and Hispanic communities. Confirmed COVID-19 cases and…
COVID-19 in Turkmenistan: No Data, No Health Rights
Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp 325 – 328 PDF Aynabat Yaylymova Turkmenistan, with a population of about 6 million, has, as of October 1, 2020, reported no SARS-CoV-2 infections, nor any COVID-19 related deaths.[1] There are no daily updates and barely any testing. However, there are reports of more deaths from acute respiratory illnesses than normal, and the autocratic government, known for endemic corruption, puts these down to dust and…
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COVID-19: Urgent Need to Find Alternatives to Prison Sentences in Malawi
Marie Claire Van Hout In May 2020, the World Health Organization joined with other UN agencies in a call for governments to recognise the heightened vulnerability of prisoners to COVID-19 and to act urgently to reduce the risks.[1] Human rights organisations submitted letters to the Southern Africa Development Community and its Member States highlighting the severe deficits in the prison system during COVID-19, and they drew special attention to pregnant…
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Paradigm Under Threat: Health and Human Rights Today
Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp 309 – 312 PDF Jonathan Cohen This Viewpoint is an abridged version of the keynote address of the 15th Anniversary Symposium of the Center for Public Health and Human Rights, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, delivered on October 15, 2019. The author thanks Dr. Chris Beyrer, Director of the CPHHR, for the invitation and permission to republish this piece. Health is both a…
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Human Rights Must Be Central to the International Health Regulations
Benjamin Mason Meier, Hanna E. Huffstetler, and Roojin Habibi Global health law is essential in framing national responses to the globalized threats of infectious disease, yet the legal foundations of the global health system are now being tested as never before. The International Health Regulations (IHR), the principal international legal framework governing infectious disease control, are designed to promote global health security while respecting human rights imperatives. Revised in 2005…
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Eliminating Asylum: The Effects of Trump Administration Policies
Katherine C. McKenzie, Eleanor Emery, Kathryn Hampton, and Sural Shah President Donald Trump has made abolishing most immigration a priority of his administration, and his policies have resulted in the de facto dismantling of asylum in the United States. These changes have impacted the lives and health of countless individuals attempting to seek safety from persecution. Settled asylum law is challenged regularly and uncertainty has stymied how attorneys, human rights…
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