Health

In a world both more connected and more ecologically compromised, health risks will continue to be a challenge. The COVID-19 pandemic threw into sharp relief our individual and collective vulnerability, as well as the deep inequalities in care and access that pervade our societies—lessons that were present in former pandemics and epidemics, from HIV/AIDS to Ebola. But the risks are not only viral: pollution and environmental degradation continue to harm communities. Sexual and reproductive rights are increasingly understood as a fundamental part of health. Societal responses to drug addiction and even violence are being informed more and more by medical and health research. How can the human rights movements help center the health and well-being of all as an organizing priority for our societies?

 

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COVID-19

Imagining our Post-Pandemic Futures

 

India should criminalize the use of 'virginity tests'

By: Sarthak Gupta
Español

The Supreme Court of India could ban the so-called “virginity tests” in cases of rape and sexual assault.

Hollow rights victories? Dutch struggles against digital injustice

By: Victoria Adelmant & Christiaan van Veen
Español

Algorithms calculating the probability of fraud were overwhelmingly and wrongly targeting immigrant groups.

Caring workspaces for human rights

By: Ezgi Kan & Kerem Çiftçioğlu
Español

Defending human rights workers’ working conditions based on an ethic of care is one of the best ways to foster resilience and well-being.

Countering the impact of discrimination against pregnant women exposed to high temperatures with human rights

By: Thomas Bundschuh
Español

Poor pregnancy outcomes due to hot temperatures include stillbirth and preterm birth before the completion of 37 weeks of pregnancy.

Lessons from the pandemic: Building a movement for global public investment

By: Alicia Ely Yamin & Joel Curtain
Español

There is a window of opportunity to move toward a model of financing based on Global Public Investment (GPI) to advance health and other social rights.

At the UN, states and anti-rights actors join forces to push back against gender justice

By: Umyra Ahmad
Español | Français

At the latest Human Rights Council session, anti-rights language started making its way into some resolutions under discussion.

Can commercialized healthcare systems help us adapt to the climate crisis?

By: Thalia Viveros Uehara
Español

The Paris Agreement calls on states to consider their human rights obligations in climate adaptation.

Stealth privatization: Kenya’s approach to universal health coverage is a private sector giveaway

By: Bassam Khawaja & Rebecca Riddell
Español

Exclusive new data shows skyrocketing public expenditure on private health facilities in Kenya.

Science and pandemic: an epistemology for human rights

By: Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky 
Español

The prevailing approach to understanding the pandemic overlooks the fact that the pandemic is a complex phenomenon, in which the social and political play as important ...

The right to health in the Global South: between epidemiology and the pharmaceutical industry

By: Everaldo Lamprea Montealegre
Español

Despite Big Pharma's decisive role in the transformation of the right to health, it continues to play a secondary role in the literature.

Vaccine inequity deepens structural racial discrimination

By: Ohene Ampofo-Anti & Camila Barretto Maia & Joshua Castellino & Pillkyu Hwang
Español | Français | العربية

Institutional failures enabling global COVID inequity can also deepen structural discrimination.

Pushing back against the normalization of COVID-19–related state of emergency restrictive measures

By: Lana Baydas & Marissa Jaime Priceman & Sally Alghazali
Español | العربية

It is time for governments to rescind repressive measures and laws, and to ensure the inclusion of civil society actors in response to pandemic recovery efforts.

Vaccinations and migrant worker lockdowns: COVID-19 and human rights in Singapore

By: Alana Barry
Español

Despite its contributions to the global vaccine effort, Singapore has failed to commit to human rights for its migrant worker population.

New Zealand’s failure to meet its human rights promises on health care and protection

By: Livvy Mitchell
Español

A recently published report reveals how the New Zealand government’s performance has allowed its health system to become stagnant.

Lost in the crisis: legal accountability for SRHR in humanitarian settings

By: Christina Zampas & Rebecca Brown
Español

If persons in humanitarian settings are to receive the SRH services they need, governments must be accountable for human rights.

This Human Rights Day, the need to affirm the indivisibility of rights has never been greater

By: Jonathan Cohen & Sofia Gruskin
Español

As the COVID-19 pandemic approaches the end of its second year, the importance of reaffirming this principle is clear.

How new uses of conscience-based claims hinder progress on abortion rights

By: Andrés Constantin & Kayla Zamanian
Español

Making sexual and reproductive health services accessible in practice means the limits of invoking conscientious objection must be incisively interrogated.

Supporting the TRIPS COVID-19 waiver is an essential step to support international human rights

By: Jackie Dugard & Franziska Sucker & Bruce Porter & Jamie Burton
Español

A waiver would be a vital step for expediting the scaling up of manufacturing and provision of COVID-19 medical products.

A discriminatory system killed a transgender man in Egypt

By: Nora Noralla
Español | العربية

By reforming its own system, Egypt can influence positive changes in other countries in the region and lead the way for accessible legal gender recognition mechanisms.

Pandemic Insights

By: OGR Admin
Español

OGR has asked several leaders in the human rights community to share a learning, a reflection, or an insight from these unique times. Read or listen to them here.

Embracing change for a better civic space

By: Tom Gerald Daly
Español

While civic action and space are under relentless pressure worldwide, different dimensions of a more positive future are being built and fought for across the world.

Abolition of the death penalty for drug offences is a mission possible

By: Ricky Gunawan
Español

The death penalty for drug offenses appears to be on the rise.

Reimagining civic space for hope

By: Tom Gerald Daly
Español

While civic action and civic space are under relentless pressure worldwide, different dimensions of a more positive future are being built and fought for in communities ...

Replacing monopolies with impact rewards

By: Thomas Pogge
Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano

Impact funds would make the business of innovation more cost-effective and enable a triple win for the potential beneficiaries of innovations.

Personal resources and those of family and friends, not the State, guarantee ESCR in Jalisco

By: Alejandro Anaya Muñoz & David Foust Rodríguez & Carlos Moreno Jaimes
Español

The Mexican State failed in its obligation to guarantee access to human rights for millions because it did not have a sufficient social security infrastructure ...

The moral test of vaccine justice

By: Jonathan Cohen
Español | Français

The forces arrayed against vaccine justice—monopolies, charity, and individualism—stand in the way of a just response to other shared global problems.

How the pandemic affects women’s rights in Uruguay

By: Romina Gallardo Duarte
Español

Under the guise of containing the pandemic, government-sanctioned violations of women’s rights in maternal care may quickly become the norm.

A cautionary lesson from Italy: commercializing healthcare can kill

By: Rosa Pavanelli & Rossella De Falco
Español | Italiano

At the latest G20 Global Health Summit, global health leaders seemed to have forgotten one of the most costly lessons of the pandemic.

Secrecy, brand vaccines, and non-cooperation in the access to COVID in Latin America

By: Tatiana Andia Rey
Español

If we add the usual policy of transnational pharmaceutical companies to the usual policy of how developed countries operate, we begin to see why regions like Latin ...

Mobilizing international human rights to challenge coronavirus vaccine apartheid

By: Jackie Dugard & Jeff Handmaker & Bruce Porter
Español

Beyond the looming humanitarian and moral catastrophe of COVID-19, lie opportunities for mobilizing international human rights law to compel states to take action, ...

Vaccine apartheid: global inequities in Covid-19 vaccine production and distribution

By: Jayati Ghosh
Español

An ‘every-country-for-itself’ approach is irrational and even counterproductive, yet that is exactly what has happened.

Human rights responses against vaccine apartheid

By: César Rodríguez-Garavito
Español

In this OGR Up Close, a series of distinguished authors go beyond denouncing the vaccine apartheid. They advocate solutions that address the current health emergency ...

Against nihilism: transformative human rights praxis for the future of global health

By: Alicia Ely Yamin & Paul Farmer
Español

If we recognize that global health has colonial origins, we must also acknowledge that it remains deeply embedded in, and shaped by, interlocking systems of power.

Human rights principles, treaties and mental health: a case study of Greece

By: Jonas Bull & Sacha Feierabend
العربية | Español | Deutsch | Français

How can human rights inform our understanding of mental health support services?

Public health prevention should be at the center of global health action

By: Andrés Constantin & Belén Rios
Español

Human rights are essential to respond to the rise of diet-related noncommunicable diseases because a human rights-based response has proven to be effective in achieving ...

The pandemic of inequality

By: Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky 
Español

What do inequalities, Covid-19, and human rights have to do with each other?

Advancing sexual and reproductive rights in “scofflaw” countries

By: Ali Miller & Ann Sarnak
Español

Using human rights covertly can identify harms otherwise difficult to attribute to root causes—especially in “scofflaw” countries.

Learning from COVID-19: Advancing Health and Human Rights in Cities

By: Jackie Smith
Español

It is now clearer than ever that the protection of global health requires universal recognition of everyone’s basic human rights.

Mobilizing empathy for a truly cosmopolitan human rights

By: Shareen Hertel
Español

If it was difficult to show the interconnections among people and rights before the onset of COVID-19, we have an opportunity to do so now.

What Kind of Support Do Human Rights Activists Need During COVID-19?

By: David Mattingly
Français

Funders should trust and imitate their frontline partners’ ability to assess their communities’ greatest needs and offer the flexibility to pivot amid a crisis.

Can the African regional human rights system preserve ESC rights in a pandemic?

By: Stanley Ibe
Français

Many states still fail to realize that protecting the rights of the poor will ultimately make addressing a pandemic—and other global crises—easier.

Between progress and backlash: protecting sexual rights and reproductive rights

By: Sofia Gruskin
Español | 简体中文

What value do human rights have for advancing protections related to sexuality in the current moment?

Why a rights-based UN response to cholera matters for COVID-19

By: Beatrice Lindstrom & Mario Joseph & Brian Concannon
Français

If the UN Secretary-General is serious that COVID-19 is a “wake-up call” for a multi-lateral response to such crises, he should start by giving cholera victims ...

Refugees and migrants in Ecuador face rising risks among decreased protections

By: Diana Herrera
Español

The pandemic and decreased recognition of refugees in Ecuador are compounding risks to the already precarious lives of asylum seekers.

Yes, women’s sexual and reproductive health should matter to the UN Security Council

By: Sara De Vido
Italiano

The failure of the UNSC to explicitly guarantee women’s rights to sexual and reproductive health reinforces a patriarchal governance system that is inherently harmful ...

The efficacy of lockdowns for COVID-19: humanising the law of derogation

By: Nafees Ahmad

Derogation from human rights obligations may be permitted in a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, but where is the balance between safety and people’s rights?

A genuine human rights-based approach for our post-pandemic future

By: John Packer & Slava Balan
Español | Français | العربية | 简体中文 | Русский | فارسی | Limba Română | Português | Italiano

When many governments are still willing to trade the lives of the vulnerable for the economic gains of the wealthiest, we need a human rights-based approach to ...

Our post-COVID future should be as much about welfare as it is about tech

By: Beatriz Botero Arcila
Español

Surveillance thrives in unequal environments, and the pandemic has increased inequality. We need a welfare state for our digital information economy.

Cancelled, postponed, virtual: COVID-19’s impact on human rights oversight

By: Citlalli Ochoa & Lisa Reinsberg
Español

Advocates’ access to human rights spaces has taken a hit with COVID-19, but this pandemic provides an opportunity to make human rights oversight more inclusive ...

Twice the work and half the support: COVID-19 and single working mothers

By: Kayla Winarsky Green
Español | Français

How can businesses help to reduce the pandemic’s unequal burden on single mothers?

Budgets are political documents: can they help control the pandemic and fight for justice?

By: Ana Cernov & Iara Pietricovsky & Nathalie Beghin
Português | Español

Budgetary decisions are always political, and these documents are a crucial tool for civil society to protect rights and demand justice.

Legal Empowerment during COVID-19: from JusticePower to #FreeThemAll

By: Tyler Walton
Español

Immigrants have decried the use of detention as migration deterrence for years, but the pandemic has given advocates a new touch point in the collective social ...

The right to employment security in post-COVID Indonesia

By: Dominique Virgil
Bahasa

Prioritizing the launch of Indonesia’s pre-employment card compromises the distribution of existing social assistance programs that could directly help those in ...

Lockdowns vs. religious freedom: COVID-19 is a trust building exercise

By: Gunnar Ekeløve-Slydal & Liv H. Kvanvig
Русский | Bahasa

Governments must partner with faith leaders to battle COVID-19, creating an opportunity to build necessary trust and cooperation with wider parts of the population.

A post-pandemic world: well-being for all or deepening inequality?

By: Guillermo Torres
Español

Putting fear aside as we emerge from this pandemic will allow space for what we value most in people: empathy, solidarity and mutual support.

Pandemic denial: an imperfect storm for autocratization in Brazil

By: Conrado Hübner
Español | Português

Rather than using the pandemic to consolidate power, Bolsonaro has denied the problem and clashed with his own government—could this mistake end his autocracy?

Early parole reforms in Turkey put political prisoners at increased risk

By: Ali Yildiz
Español | Türkçe

A new early parole bill in Turkey had the potential to improve the country’s human rights track record—but instead, it leaves political prisoners even worse off.

Normalizing the state of exception: Japan’s response to COVID-19

By: Saul Takahashi 
Español

COVID-19 may prove to be just the game changer that Japan’s prime minister needs to push through his agenda for revising the Constitution.

Returning to “normal” is impossible for India’s tea plantation workers

By: Shreya Sen
Español

Workers in India’s tea plantations have pre-existing health and environmental conditions that make them highly vulnerable to COVID-19, making a return to “normal” ...

London refugee groups offer online services but face disparities in connectivity

By: Christa Blackmon
Français | العربية

With millions of the world’s students now facing extended learning at home, the required access to the internet—and to the right devices—is exposing drastic inequalities.

Coronavirus and the right to online political participation

By: Sam Bocetta
Français

Making access to the internet a human right can address inequalities in access to public discourse, especially where free speech is limited.

Coronavirus in austerity Britain: poverty and discrimination compounded

By: Imogen Richmond-Bishop & Sara Bailey

The global pandemic—following ten years of draconian austerity measures in the UK—has created a perfect storm of human rights violations against already marginalized ...

Will COVID-19 increase religious hostilities and discrimination?

By: Marie Juul Petersen  & Claire Thomas & Sajjad Hassan
Español | العربية

COVID-19 and its impacts may hit some religious minorities disproportionately hard, exacerbating economic inequalities, social hostilities and discrimination.

What does protection from persecution look like during a pandemic?

By: Kathryn Hampton
Español | Français

Policy decisions to exclude asylum seekers due to the pandemic are neither predetermined nor inevitable: we have a choice.

COVID-19 exposes why access to the internet is a human right

By: Jack J. Barry
Español | Français

COVID-19 has exposed the underlying reality that not everyone has internet at home.

Time for a rights-based global economic stimulus to tackle COVID-19

By: Ignacio Saiz
Español | Français

During this pandemic, economic rescue packages—nationally and globally—must protect the socioeconomic rights of those most at risk.

To face COVID-19, the human rights community must first protect its own workers

By: Lysa John
Español | Français

The COVID-19 crisis should be a wake-up call to civil society to strengthen the social protection measures in our own industry.

In a pandemic, be a positive disruptor and not an ambulance chaser

By: Anjli Parrin & Gulika Reddy
Español | Français

In moments of crisis, it is critical that social justice advocates remain focused on ethical and transformative advocacy, not reactive short-term change.

Post-pandemic futures, hope, and human rights

By: César Rodríguez-Garavito
Español | Français | العربية

If human rights actors are to help shape the post-pandemic world, they need to start imagining it now.

Post-pandemic collective action for health rights and social justice is essential

By: Alicia Ely Yamin
Español | Français | Limba Română

The pandemic shows the need for post-crisis collective action, and rising to the task will be essential if we are to realize a new global economic order—with human ...

Making a Community Action Net (work): organising in the times of COVID-19

By: Ella Scheepers & Ishtar Lakhani & Kasey Armstrong
Français | Español

Community Action Networks in South Africa bring residents from varied backgrounds into collective action to find solutions to COVID-related issues.

Covid-19 and the duty to provide health information to diverse populations

By: Anne Hellum & Kristin Bergtora Sandvik & Tatanya Valland & Marta BIvand Erdal
Español | Français

As European nations struggle to provide COVID-19 information to immigrant and minority populations, Norway illustrates a grounded and inclusive approach.

Over-policing in India is not the answer to COVID-19

By: Urmila Pullat & Roohi Huma
Español | العربية

The recent behaviour of police in India begs the question: is a punitive approach to a public health crisis necessary and warranted?

Solidarity key to post COVID-19 response

By: Obiora C. Okafor
Español | Français

Realizing the vision embodied by human rights requires bolder measures and commitments to international solidarity than the world has so far witnessed.

China, the coronavirus, and the liberal international order

By: Christopher W. Bishop
Español | 简体中文

China’s apparent success in tackling COVID-19 will bolster its authoritarian political system—and its restrictive approach to human rights.

We need privacy and data laws to tackle this world pandemic

By: Beatriz Botero Arcila
Español | 简体中文 | Limba Română

Governments are increasingly using digital technologies and big data analytics to address the Covid-19 pandemic. These technologies can’t replace other comprehensive ...

New policies for a new crisis

By: Koldo Casla
Español

Human rights activists don’t have all the answers to the pandemic, but they should focus on protecting the most vulnerable, and be alert to creeping authoritarianism.

Global HIV/AIDS response, shows human rights is path to success against COVID-19

By: Steven L. B. Jensen
Español | Français

The global response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic found success when it put human rights at the core of its efforts, a lesson of key importance to our present and future ...

Rights and responsibilities in the Coronavirus pandemic

By: Kathryn Sikkink
Español | Português | Limba Română

To protect our collective right to health in the current pandemic situation, we need to balance our individual rights with collective responsibilities.

The little tissue that couldn’t – the hymen’s role in determining sexual history or assault

By: Ranit Mishori & Karen Naimer & Thomas McHale
Español | Français

For such a small piece of tissue, the hymen has gained outsized status as the arbiter of virginity. But can it really do that?

Protecting abortion providers requires effective strategies to prevent harassment

By: Ximena Casas Isaza
Español | Français

Abortion providers working in national contexts where the law is poorly understood and abortion is socially stigmatized face harassment by police, spurious charges, ...

American policy is strangling health access in the global South

By: Karen Chonofsky
Español

The US Global Gag Rule is impeding far more than access to abortion in the global South—services for HIV, tuberculosis, sanitation, and nutrition are all being ...

Incomplete information on emergency contraception drugs is risking women’s health

By: Leyla-Denisa Obreja
Español

Amidst growing debate on women’s reproductive rights, worldwide policies allowing free access to emergency contraception as non-prescription drugs are putting women ...

Battling exclusion: giving a voice to women affected by leprosy

By: Alice Cruz
Español

Women affected by leprosy in India and beyond face high levels of discrimination and stigmatization, with virtually no legal recourse or social support—what can ...

From revolution to bureaucratization: human rights law becomes central to global health governance

By: Benjamin Mason Meier & Lawrence O. Gostin

Given the dramatic development of human rights under international law and the proliferation of global institutions for public health, it is essential to understand ...

Reproductive gene editing imperils universal human rights

By: Marcy Darnovsky & Leah Lowthorp & Katie Hasson
简体中文 | Русский | Español

The prohibition on reproductive gene editing to enhance human capabilities is weakening in the face of scientific breakthroughs—leaving universal human rights at ...

Empowering language of rights underlies increasing use in HIV advocacy

By: Kristi Heather Kenyon
Setswana | Zulu

Local HIV activists are expanding human rights discourse into health advocacy, largely due to belief in the empowering impact of rights language, not expectations ...

Climate change exacerbates gender inequality, putting women’s health at risk

By: Hwei Mian Lim
Español

Climate change takes a higher toll on women than on men. Women’s health and well-being, including their sexual and reproductive health and rights are all at stake.

For sexual minorities, “closing space” for civil society means losing access to critical services

By: David Kuria Mbote
Français

Closing space for African sexual and gender minority groups is about far more than advocacy—it is about accessing critical services that no one else provides.

From taboo to empowerment: menstruation and gender equality

By: Archana Patkar & Rockaya Aidara & Inga T. Winkler
Français

Menstruation and menstrual hygiene are emerging as pivotal issues for gender equality, human rights and development.

What does Zika have to do with inequality? Everything.

By: Rachel Schmidt
Español

Women’s rights advocates are using fears around Zika to fight for better access to birth control, but in Latin America the issues run much deeper than that.

Ebola, human rights, and poverty – making the links

By: Alicia Ely Yamin

The Ebola crisis shows the necessity of a human rights approach to public health that focuses on discrimination and accountability, and the crisis itself has been ...

Faith and health care in Africa: a complex reality

By: Jill Olivier
Français | العربية

It’s time to move past overly simplistic arguments surrounding Catholics and condoms, and make an effort to understand the real and very complex contributions of ...

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