Health and Human Rights News
Week ending 31 August 2025
Famine confirmed in Gaza
An Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis has confirmed that Gaza is experiencing a famine, with conditions projected to spread further outside of Gaza Governorate in coming weeks. United Nations agencies including Food and Agriculture Organization, UN Children’s Fund, World Food Programme, and the World Health Organization highlighted the urgent need for unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza, emphasizing that an immediate and sustained ceasefire is necessary to curb further devastation. “A ceasefire is an absolute and moral imperative now,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “The world has waited too long, watching tragic and unnecessary deaths mount from this man-made famine.”
Medics in Israel urged to speak out
Medical professionals in Israel must speak out against genocide in Gaza, says Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, following the report from Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) concluding that famine is already taking place in Gaza City and is expected to spread south. “This catastrophe began to unfold months ago and was entirely predictable.” said PHR-I. displaced.” PHR Israel also called for unimpeded humanitarian access into the Gaza Strip to allow the entry of necessary food aid and medical care as well as to ensure desperately needed medical evacuations.
Catastrophic harm to global health: case against Trump
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), along with the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), and affected individuals in Kenya and South Africa, filed an Amicus Brief in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit case, Global Health Council v. Trump. The appeal aims to reverse the discontinuance of foreign aid and USAID programming. It documents the catastrophic and irreversible health consequences created and perpetuated by the Trump administration’s shuttering of USAID and foreign assistance cuts.
See also:
FIGHT FOR RIGHTS: Trump’s Banned Words and Disastrous Health Policies, Joseph J. Amon, 3 February 2025
Pro-science US health leader sacked
Last week the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) tried to oust the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Susan Monarez, who was less than a month into the role. She was given no reason for the sacking and refused to resign, creating a standoff with Robert F. Kennedy, Secretary of HHS. A White House spokesperson said Monarez had been dismissed, claiming she was “not aligned” with the president’s agenda. Her lawyers argue she is being targeted for her pro-science stance. The Guardian reported that the ousting set off a wave of departures within the agency, with at least three other CDC leaders publicly resigning.
Data and human rights in a fight for climate justice
Decoding Climate Finance, a new resource produced by the Center for Economic and Social Rights and La Ruta del Clima, uses human rights and data to challenge economic oppression in climate finance. It is the latest in CESR’s “Decoding Injustice” series which supports the work of activists, researchers, and advocates by guiding a process revealing power structures in climate finance. “The rules that decide who pays, who benefits, and who decides are rooted in colonial exploitation, corporate impunity, and unequal governance. To win climate justice, these rules must be challenged and transformed.”
Report on rights-based approach to energy transition
The UN Special Rapporteur on climate change Elisa Morgera has emphasised the necessity of phasing out fossil fuels in order to fulfil economic and social rights, including the right to health. Her most recent report contains evidence of the positive and negative human rights impacts of renewable energy development and its reliance on minerals and outlines the legal duties of states and other actors to support human rights during the energy transition.
Protecting workers from heat hazards
A report and technical guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO) identifies the health impacts of extreme heat and provides clear steps for protecting workers as climate change drives rising temperatures and more frequent heatwaves. ‘Climate change and workplace heat stress’ has recommendations for governments, employers, and health authorities and “serves as a vital tool to help countries respond decisively, protecting lives, livelihoods and economies from the growing threat of extreme heat,” says WHO.
See also:
Crises as Catalyst: A New Social Contract Grounded in Worker Rights, Diane F. Frey, Gillian MacNaughton, Andjela H. Kaur, and Elena K. Taborda, Volume 23/2, December 2021
Globally, one in four lacks access to drinking water
The UN Children’s Fund and World Health Organization released a report during World Water Week highlighting water inequality worldwide. Despite some progress, the report ‘Progress on Household Drinking Water and Sanitation 2000–2024: special focus on inequalities’ finds that “billions of people around the world still lack access to essential water, sanitation, and hygiene services, putting them at risk of disease and deeper social exclusion.” Furthermore, 3.4 billion people still lack safely managed sanitation, including 354 million who practice open defecation.
Tackle the Big Five’s market power
The growing power and uncontrolled dominance of the five major tech companies presents serious risks to human rights, particularly as it stretches into artificial intelligence, says Amnesty International report, “Breaking up with Big Tech”. The report into Alphabet (Google), Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple reveals the current human rights consequences of Big Tech’s control over the market, highlighting a wide range of risks from the collection of personal health data to poor monitoring and moderation of psychologically harmful content.
See also:
China continues to ignore UN over Uyghur detainees
Families of detainees in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have told Amnesty International of their continued suffering, three years after a major UN report said China was responsible for ‘serious human rights violations’. The 2022 UN Human Rights report concluded that China had committed crimes against humanity, and yet the repression of Muslim ethnic minorities has persisted, with many still arbitrarily detained in prison and internment camps, unable to contact their families, and often experiencing ill treatment and torture.
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