While gender equality is enshrined in the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights, in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and in legislation in most countries, women’s conditions of participation in markets and their rewards from that participation, still remain woefully unequal to men’s. Many women work in temporary or informal positions and are therefore “invisible” to laws and regulations. Women also currently bear a disproportionate share of household and domestic labour performing 80% of unpaid care work. Business can’t solve all these problems alone, but corporate practice can either, aggravate and perpetuate gender inequality, or it can help lead the way to for equality among men and women. This article discusses the Women’s Empowerment Principles, which are a set of Principles for business offering guidance on how to empower women in the workplace, marketplace and community. The seven principles are: 1. Establish high-level corporate leadership for gender equality. 2. Treat all women and men fairly at work – respect and support human rights and non-discrimination. 3. Ensure the health, safety and well-being of all women and men workers. 4. Promote education, training and professional development for women. 5. Implement enterprise development, supply chain and marketing practices that empower women. 6. Promote equality through community initiatives and advocacy. 7. Measure and publicly report on progress to achieve gender equality.
Values, Policies and Rights
Mauritius is signatory to the 2001 Doha Declaration, which ensures that government can access generic medicines for use in the public sector and without the patent holder’s approval and is an important tool to ensure universal access to medicines. Although the state has been compliant with the Doha Declaration, the Constitution of Mauritius has no provisions for the protection of the right to health. Furthermore, the National Human Rights Commission has no specific mandate to deal with economic, social and cultural rights and there is no National Medicines Policy document. The author calls on government to give effect to the recommendation of the CESCR and bring about a constitutional amendment that will include economic, social and cultural rights in the Constitution thus making the right to health justiciable. After including the right to health in the Constitution, the government should adopt a new legislation to protect the right to health of all the citizens and enshrine access to medicines as a component of the right to health. To avoid any foreseeable problem, the use of generic medicines should be included in the act and there should be a clear demarcation between generic drugs and counterfeiting so that it does not limit the access to medicines of Mauritians.
This study was conducted to estimate the prevalence of self-reported bullying and its personal and social correlates through a secondary analysis of the 2009 Malawi School-Based Student Health Survey. A total of 2,264 in-school adolescents participated. Just under half (44.5%) reported having been bullied in the previous month to the survey (44.1% among boys versus 44.9% among girls). Compared to adolescents of age 16 years or older, those who were 12 years old or younger and those who were 14 years of age were more likely to be bullied. The other risk factors that were identified in the analysis were loneliness and being worried. Adolescents who had no close friends were 14% more likely to be reporting bullied compared to adolescents who reported having close friends. Adolescents who smoked cigarettes were more than three times more likely to reporting be bullied compared to non-smokers, while those who drank alcohol were more than twice as likely to be bullied as adolescents who did not take alcohol. Health workers caring for adolescents should be sensitised to the frequent occurrence of bullying and to its correlates and consequences.
What can we take forward, post-2015, from the successes of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and what have we learnt from their shortcomings? In this editorial, the Lancet’s editors argue that the MDGs have led to inequities by narrowing down the goals to a limited number, notably excluding non-communicable diseases. Future directions call for building on the conceptual simplicity of the MDGs, taking a people-centred approach that captures the determinants of health and returning to the notion of health as a human right, with equity at its heart. The editors briefly analyse the United Nations Report of the Global Thematic Consultation on Health. They agree with the decision to measure health status through a hierarchy of goals, with maximisation of healthy life expectancy at the top, instead of using universal health coverage, which they argue does not address the determinants of health, is difficult to measure and compare across countries, and is only an indirect indicator of health status. Three indicators are proposed to measure progress: improved survival (including maternal and child survival), reduced burden of disease (including diseases covered by the MDGs plus non-communicable diseases), and lower levels of risk factors (eg, smoking and lack of access to sanitation).
As the 2015 deadline for the Millennium Development Goals approaches, the People’s Health Movement (PHM) has produced this statement in which they set out an agenda for the political leaders who will formulate the next set of post-2015 ‘development goals’. First, development must not be construed solely as economic growth and industrialisation; it must include cultural and institutional development and include the rich world as well as low- and middle-income countries. Second, addressing the global health crisis requires that we confront the social, economic, political and environmental determination of health, recognising the negative consequences of neoliberalism. Third, reform of the global economic and political architecture must be an inclusive process. Nation states must achieve sustainable development and universal social protection before the interests of multinationals are even considered. Fourth, the post 2015 development agenda must work towards new approaches to national and global decision making, based on popular participation, direct democracy, solidarity, equity and security. Finally, sustainable and equitable development will be achieved only if people’s movements unite across sectors, cultures and national boundaries and articulate a coherent set of goals and strategies for change.
The High-level Global Thematic Consultation on Health brought together representatives from governments, non-governmental organisations, academic and research institutions and the private sector to debate how to advance health priorities in the post-2015 development agenda. The consultation took place in Gaborone, Botswana from 5-6 March 2013. UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé encouraged participants to seize the opportunity to adopt a bold, transformative vision and goals to guide global health in the post-2015 agenda. He argued that the global community needs to completely rethink how global health will engage on issues from intellectual property to the production of essential medicines and the central role of countries and communities. He also called for stronger attention to critical social enablers such as gender equality, human rights and equity. Health goals and indicators can be used to help track progress in these cross-cutting issues, he added.
Written during the final illness of Hugo Chavez, who died of cancer on 5 March 2013, this article considers the achievements of this visionary leader of Venezuela. Chavez used Venezuela’s abundant oil revenues to build needed infrastructure and invest in the social services: during the last ten years, the government increased social spending by 60.6%, a total of $772 billion. During Chavez’s term of office impressive health gains were made, such as a drop in infant mortality from 25 per 1000 (1990) to only 13/1000 (2010), while 96% of the population now has access to clean water, one of the goals of the revolution. In 1998, there were 18 doctors per 10,000 inhabitants, currently there are 58, and the public health system has about 95,000 physicians. It took four decades for previous governments to build 5,081 clinics, but in just 13 years the Bolivarian government built 13,721 (a 169.6% increase). Barrio Adentro (a primary health care partnership with 8,300 Cuban doctors) has saved approximately 1,4 million lives in 7,000 clinics and has given 500 million consultations. In 2011 alone, 67,000 Venezuelans received free high cost medicines for 139 pathologies conditions including cancer, hepatitis, osteoporosis, schizophrenia, and others. Venezuela now has the largest intensive care unit in the region. A network of public drugstores sell subsidised medicines in 127 stores with savings of 34-40%. Over the past few years, 51,000 people have been treated in Cuba for specialized eye treatment and the eye care programme ‘Mision Milagro’ has restored sight to 1.5 million Venezuelans.
In this article, the author reflects on the emergence and contemporary practice of health diplomacy, exploring in particular the potential of niche areas within health diplomacy to become constructive focal points of emerging middle powers’ foreign policies. Middle powers like South Africa often apply niche diplomacy to maximise their foreign policy impact, particularly by pursuing a multilateral agenda. The literature on middle powers indicates that such foreign policy ambitions and concomitant diplomacy mostly act to affirm the global status quo. Instead, the author argues here that there may well be niches within health diplomacy in particular that can be used to actually challenge the existing global order. Emerging middle powers in particular can use niche areas within health diplomacy in a critical theoretical manner, so that foreign policy and diplomacy become a project of emancipation and transformation, rather than an affirmation of the world as it is. The author reviews South African foreign policy and diplomacy, before situating these policies within the context of emerging mechanisms of South-South multilateralism. He advocates for a South African AIDS diplomacy, emphasising its potential to galvanise a global project of emancipation.
This report reports on the impact of Christian conservatism from United States on human rights policies in Africa. A number of churches are reported in this paper to be working in Africa to promote US ‘family values’, campaigning against condom use to prevent HIV transmission, claiming that family planning is a Western conspiracy to reduce African development, and supporting campaigns to pursue the death penalty for gays and lesbians. The author argues that government and civil society should confront the myths of human rights advocacy being western neocolonialism, noting indigenous African human rights agendas and support African advocacy to respect human rights for all.
Gender-based violence (GBV) is a significant human rights violation and a key driver of the HIV epidemic in southern and eastern Africa. In this study, the authors frame GBV from a broad human rights approach that includes intimate partner violence and structural violence. They use this broader definition to review how National Strategic Plans for HIV and AIDS (NSPs) in southern and eastern Africa address GBV. NSPs for HIV and AIDS provide the national-level framework that shapes government, business, external funder, and non-governmental responses to HIV within a country. They authors’ review suggests that attention to GBV is poorly integrated, and few recognise GBV and programme around GBV. The programming, policies and interventions that do exist privilege responses that support survivors of violence, rather than seeking to prevent it. Furthermore, the subject who is targeted is narrowly constructed as a heterosexual woman in a monogamous relationship. There is little consideration of GBV targeting women who have non-conforming sexual or gender identities, or of the need to tackle structural violence in the response to HIV and AIDS.