Violence against women has become as much a pandemic as HIV/AIDS or malaria. But it is still generally downplayed by the public at large and by policymakers who fail to create and fund programmes to eradicate it. However, the achievements over the last few decades of women and men around the world who have worked to combat violence against women and promote women's empowerment are monumental. This report from Unifem also includes a focus on the problem of violence against women as a violation of human rights as well as a public health issue. "In the last decade, gender-based violence moved from the shadows to the foreground. It is increasingly recognized as a violation of human rights, as a public health problem and as a crime against women and society," says the report.
Values, Policies and Rights
Human rights and the domains of health system responsiveness share a common goal: furthering the rights of individuals and communities in the context of the health system. If a health system is responsive, it is possible that the interactions which people have within the health system will improve their well-being, irrespective of improvements to their health. This brief report from the World Health Organisation’s Evidence and Information for Policy cluster discusses the human rights context to the provision of health services to the public.
In order to understand how and why social movements are fighting for women's health and rights you need to have a 21st century notion of these rights. This is a central message of the book Global Prescriptions: Gendering Health and Human Rights. The rights that Rosalind Pollack Petchesky discusses are not those determined by grey-suited lawyers and bureaucrats, and enshrined as fixed, universal, and unalienable principles. They are rights that exist in an era of global capitalism; rights that are influenced by sex, race, class, geography, and ethnicity; rights that are dynamic and malleable; and rights that, above all, are a necessary and irrepressible element of movements for social change. Petchesky views individual and social rights as "two sides of the same coin". She ascribes equal importance to social and economic rights as to those related to reproduction, sexuality, and health; noting that together they form "a single fabric of rights".
Gaps in child mortality between rich and poor are unacceptably wide and growing. Poorer children face disadvantages at every step from exposure and resistance to infectious disease, through care-seeking, and to effective treatment. How can policy-makers close these gaps? An international team of researchers explore the options of targeting and universal coverage.
This new publication draws attention to important human rights issues that migration poses for health policy-makers internationally, such as the health implications of forced migration as well as detaining and screening migrants at the borders. The book will serve as a guide to emphasise important human rights principles by which governments, policy-makers and other actors can design and implement health policies and programmes in the context of migration. It sets out to demonstrate the need for further attention, research and elaboration of policy approaches in this area.