Category: Viewpoints

Miriam Abaya, Nandita Bajaj, Warren Binford, Michelle Blake, Carter Dillard, James Dold, Hope Ferdowsian, Wendy Lazarus, Reid Maki, Shantel Meek, Jerry Milner, Jennifer Nagda, Vidya Kumar Ramanathan, Nevena Vuckovic Sahovic, and Jonathan Todres In a recent series of workshops to address the lack of leadership for child rights in the United States, our participants identified the need for a high-level federal entity to oversee children’s issues. The United States remains…

Continue reading “US High-Level Office for Children is Critical for Children’s Rights”

Hyeyoung Lim, Ralf Jurgens, Alexandrina Iovita, and Joanne Csete Tuberculosis disproportionately affects people marginalized by poverty, people in detention, and individuals living with and vulnerable to HIV. The End TB Strategy of the World Health Organization (WHO), endorsed by many donors and partners, includes as two of its four founding principles the protection and promotion of the human rights of those affected by the disease and the strengthening of civil…

Continue reading “Acting on TB and Human Rights: The Breaking Down Barriers Initiative of the Global Fund”

Joseph J. Amon, Nina Sun, Alexandrina Iovita, Ralf Jurgens, and Joanne Csete Over the past two decades, considerable work has been done to theorize, understand, and quantify the impact of stigma and discrimination on health. Yet despite clear differences, researchers, practitioners, and donors have often designed programs, set goals, and defined indicators that fail to differentiate between the two, or that define discrimination as a sub-type of stigma.[1] Within HIV…

Continue reading “Addressing Stigma is Not Enough”

Gideon Lasco, Raudah Mohd Yunus, Edward Christopher Dee, and Martin McKee Health workers have been on the clinical front lines of the struggle against COVID-19, enduring conditions they could never have anticipated. But many have also been engaged on the political front lines. In brief interludes between caring for sick and dying patients they have become advocates for health, demanding action on practical concerns, such as inadequate supplies of personal…

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PDF Timothy Arvan The recent COP26 climate summit in Glasgow took place amid intensifying scrutiny on global leaders for collective failures of ambition and resolve in mobilizing climate action. A pre-COP synthesis report by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat on the status of states’ nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement found that global emissions are on pace to increase 16% by 2030, a…

Continue reading “The Right to a Healthy Environment is a Powerful Sword for Climate Justice”

PDF Vicente Silva Didier The enjoyment of the right to health across the world is under serious threat because of the adverse effects of climate change. Mounting evidence shows that climate change is leading to a global health catastrophe, hitting the hardest those who already suffer from poverty, discrimination, and structural disadvantages, exacerbating longstanding socioeconomic and gender inequalities.[1] Both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the World Health…

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Gautam Gulati, Brendan D. Kelly, Alan Cusack, Shane Kilcommins, and Colum P. Dunne There are over 10 million people in prisons worldwide and people with disabilities are grossly over-represented among them. The prevalence of intellectual disabilities, for example, amongst incarcerated populations ranges from 7-10% depending on jurisdiction.1 The United States, with just 4% of the planet’s population, houses a quarter of the world’s prisoners, of whom one third have at…

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PDF Stephen Gasteyer World leaders and diplomats who gathered in Glasgow made pledges (often commitments to make future commitments) that demonstrated incremental progress in mitigating climate change, while mollifying powerful economic and political interests.[1] The problem will be in the implementation of commitments—especially the commitments that will necessitate reigning in powerful actors, rather than simply implementing new technologies that emit less carbon.[2] By the end of the COP26 Summit in…

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Tamar Ezer and Denise Tomasini-Joshi The United States, with its inadequate social safety net and lack of community-based mental health resources, has come to rely on the criminal legal system to respond to mental health needs. “The mental health system is largely broken across the country. We’ve tried to paper over it by funding law enforcement.”[1] This has transformed mental health into a law enforcement matter, with people with mental…

Continue reading “First Responders with a Rights-Based Approach to Mental Health Crises”