A problem peasant women face is invisibility in the feminist and women’s movements. A second problem is the weakness with which the food sovereignty concept has dealt with the challenges of feminism. Latin America has assumed the struggle for food sovereignty as an alternative to the neoliberal economic model. Food sovereignty is based on the conviction that each people has the right to make decisions about its own food systems: about its own eating habits; about its production, marketing, distribution, exchange, and sharing; and about keeping food and seeds in the public sphere. This interview report presents the views from a feminist point of view on how people make decisions, who decides how power is organised and how to turn food sovereignty into a tool to strengthen and empower peasant women.
Values, Policies and Rights
The Open University and Southampton University, South African SAIIA FLACSO-Argentina and UNU-CRIS are currently involved in the Poverty Reduction and Regional Integration (PRARI) project, a two year project studying what regional institutional practices and methods of regional policy formation are conducive to the emergence of embedded pro-poor health strategies, and what can national, regional and international actors do to promote these, particularly in South America and Southern Africa.
The drive for Universal Health Coverage is currently very intense. Everybody seems to agree on this objective. However, the term is argued to be ambiguous term and in Latin America two different notions
are used. One refers to forms of health insurance, be they voluntary or compulsory and public or private, and in variable combinations. The other refers to a single public health system—ie, a unified tax-funded health system as an obligation of the state. The authors argue that it is critical to distinguish between these two notions and to set uniform criteria of analysis to compare their achievements. In this context, these are: population and medical coverage in their categories of universal or segmented access and use of service and possible barriers; origin and management of health funds; type of providers; health expenditure, public and private; distribution of costs and amount of out-of-pocket expenditure; impact on public health actions and health conditions; and equity, popular participation, and transparency. Taken together, these reveal the extent to which the right to health, a widely held social value, is attained. The authors analyse the largely pluralist health insurance in Latin America and argue that it does not grant the right to health, understood as equal access to the necessary services for equal need. By contrast with the intrinsic restrictions of universal health insurance, the problems of the single public health system are identified as operational. Where implemented in Latin America, while they have problems to resolve, these unified publicly funded systems are argued to be 'on their way to grant the right to health'.
Investment treaties should be reviewed to ensure that States have the right to make changes in their laws and policies to further human rights regardless of the impact of such changes on investors’ rights. This recommendation came from the Special Rapporteur on Right to Health, Mr. Anand Grover in his last report to the UN General Assembly (UNGA). The report notes that nearly 40 countries have already began renegotiation of international investment treaties. The Grover report calls for an international treaty to hold transnational corporations (TNCs) accountable for their violations on human rights. The report presents the current state of play with regard to the accountability of TNCs with regard to human rights violations. Two other sub-sections discuss the shortcomings of international investment treaties and the investor -state dispute settlement mechanism.
The UN General Assembly later this month will begin negotiations over the content of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015. The draft SDGs contain very few explicit references to human rights, and are conspicuously silent on their role as a universal normative framework for sustainable development. This article explores how human rights advocates should navigate these contentious issues over the coming year. Three key shifts in strategy are presented as necessary to turn the tables on the stale geo-political dynamics that threaten to undermine the SDGs as an endeavour that is truly transformative and human rights-centred. Firstly, human rights advocates need to underscore the extraterritorial obligations of wealthier states to respect and protect human rights beyond their borders, and to cooperate internationally in their fulfilment. Secondly, advocates must counter the corporate influence on the post-2015 process with a much stronger push for corporate accountability. Thirdly, the human rights community must build more effective platforms and alliances with development, social justice and environmental movements to amplify the human rights voice in these debates, avoiding the fragmentation and issue-specific silos that have characterized advocacy to date.
This paper proposes policy options based on ILO research and experiences that aim at universal coverage and equitable access to health care. The policy options discussed focus on ensuring the human rights to social security and health and on the rights-based approaches underpinning the need for equity and poverty alleviation. This paper also provides insights into aspects of implementation and related challenges. It includes an overview of ILO concepts, definitions and strategic approaches to achieving socially inclusive and sustainable progress and highlights recent global trends.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were ‘top-down’ goals formulated by policy elites drawing from targets within United Nations (UN) summits and conferences in the 1990s. Contemporary processes shaping the new post-2015 development agenda are more collaborative and participatory, markedly different to the pre-MDG era. This study examines what would the outcome be if a methodology similar to that used for the MDGs were applied to the formulation of the post-2015 development goals (Post-2015DGs), identifying those targets arising from UN summits and conferences since the declaration of the MDGs, and aggregating them into goals. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) list of major UN summits and conferences from 2001 to 2012 was utilised to examine targets. The DESA list was chosen due to the agency’s core mission to promote development for all. Targets meeting MDG criteria of clarity, conciseness and measurability were selected and clustered into broad goals based on processes outlined by Hulme and Vandemoortele. The Post-2015DGs that were identified were formatted into language congruent with the MDGs to assist in the comparative analysis, and then further compared to the 12 illustrative goals offered by the UN High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development (High-Level Panel) Agenda’s May 2013 report. Ten Post-2015DGs were identified. Six goals expressly overlapped with the current MDGs and four new goals were identified. Health featured prominently in the MDG agenda, and continues to feature strongly in four of the 10 Post-2015DGs. However the Post-2015DGs reposition health within umbrella agendas relating to women, children and the ageing. Six of the 10 Post-2015DGs incorporate the right to health agenda, emphasising both the standing and interconnection of the health agenda in DESA’s summits and conferences under review. Two Post-2015DGs have been extended into six separate goals by the High-Level Panel, and it is these goals that are clearly linked to sustainable development diaspora. This study exposes the evolving political agendas underplaying the current post-2015 process, as targets from DESA’s 22 major UN summits and conferences from 2001 to 2012 are not wholly mirrored in the HLP’s 12 goals.
In late May, President Jacob Zuma South Africa signed into law long-dormant sections of the National Health Act that would give the Director General of Health the power to deny doctors operating licenses depending on where in the country the medical professional wished to operate, or open or expand a practice. Following this, doctors would have had to apply to the Department of Health for a “certificate of need,” or permission to work in an area, by 1 April 2016. SAMA, the South African Dental Association, and the specialist body, the South African Private Practitioners Forum have all vocally opposed Certificates of Need and were considering Constitutional Court litigation against the department over the matter. The Department of Health has, however, decided to shelve plans to regulate where doctors could practice – at least temporarily. Department of Health spokesperson Joe Maila stated that the intention is not to redraft the Act but to allow parties sufficient time to draft and engage with regulations before the act takes effect.
Several biological, behavioural, and structural risk factors place female sex workers (FSWs) at heightened risk of HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and other adverse sexual and reproductive health (SRH) outcomes. FSW projects in many settings have demonstrated effective ways of altering this risk, improving the health and wellbeing of these women. Yet the optimum delivery model of FSW projects in Africa is unclear. This systematic review describes intervention packages, service-delivery models, and extent of government involvement in these services in Africa. The authors located 149 articles, which described 54 projects. Most were localised and small-scale; focused on research activities (rather than on large-scale service delivery); operated with little coordination, either nationally or regionally; and had scanty government support (instead a range of international donors generally funded services). Almost all sites only addressed HIV prevention and STIs. Most services distributed male condoms, but only 10% provided female condoms. HIV services mainly encompassed HIV counselling and testing; few offered HIV care and treatment such as CD4 testing or antiretroviral therapy (ART). While STI services were more comprehensive, periodic presumptive treatment was only provided in 11 instances. Services often ignored broader SRH needs such as family planning, cervical cancer screening, and gender-based violence services. Sex work programmes in Africa have limited coverage and a narrow scope of services and are poorly coordinated with broader HIV and SRH services. To improve FSWs’ health and reduce onward HIV transmission, access to ART needs to be addressed urgently. Nevertheless, HIV prevention should remain the mainstay of services. Service delivery models that integrate broader SRH services and address structural risk factors are much needed. Government-led FSW services of high quality and scale would markedly reduce SRH vulnerabilities of FSWs in Africa.
The Angola National Nurses Association in Lubango, southern Huila Province, created an Ethics Commission with a view to making the services rendered in this sector more humanised. The spokesman of ANEA, Rufino Kulamba, who was speaking at the International Nurses Day commemorations, said that the commission will be tasked with supervising the nursing activity. He stressed that the idea is to make professionals in this area have a better and better relationship with patients, as well as bring about professional improvements in this sector. He also explained that the commission will facilitate the filing of complaints against nurses who violate the principles of professional ethics.