Values, Policies and Rights

Africa's Push for Reproductive Rights Fund Rubs U.S. the Wrong Way
Africa Women and Child Feature Service via allafrica.com

A number of African gender advocates in both government and civil society have put up spirited fight to have the United Nations create a Fund to address millennium development goal issues of reproductive health and gender empowerment. To be known as the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Fund, resources channelled to this Fund are to be used to lower the high maternal and child mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa and ensure gender empowerment and environmental goals are implemented with speed. But the United States, especially the Bush Administration and other pro-life advocates, are said not to be warming up to the idea, which they see as coded attempts to fund abortion related issues and increase procurement of condoms.

Sexual and reproductive health and rights: a cornerstone of development
Sida/Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), 2005

In this paper, the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (Sida) sets out its policy on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). It argues that violations of the right to sexual and reproductive health both cause and are caused by poverty. Therefore, realising SRHR is not only a goal in itself, but a means to fight poverty, underpinning all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The paper considers sexual and reproductive health from the perspective of human rights and of the poor, emphasising the need to address power structures and their impacts.

Discussing the theory of human rights
Philosophy & Public Affairs, Volume 32 Issue 4

"Few concepts are as frequently invoked in contemporary political discussions as human rights. There is something deeply attractive in the idea that every person anywhere in the world, irrespective of citizenship or territorial legislation, has some basic rights, which others should respect. The moral appeal of human rights has been used for a variety of purposes, from resisting torture and arbitrary incarceration to demanding the end of hunger and of medical neglect. At the same time, the central idea of human rights as something that people have, and have even without any specific legislation, is seen by many as foundationally dubious and lacking in cogency."

The Initiative for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Health Sector Reforms

The Initiative for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Health Sector Reforms is an international research, capacity building and advocacy project (also known as the Rights and Reforms Initiative). It aims to promote health sector reforms that are conducive to implementing the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development's (ICPD) Programme of Action, are driven by in-country actors, and are responsive to the needs of the people of the country, especially poor women. The main purpose of the Initiative is to strengthen understanding amongst activists and decision-makers of the role of global social and economic changes and specifically of health sector reforms (HSR) in facilitating or undermining efforts to achieve sexual and reproductive rights in health policies and programmes.

Further details: /newsletter/id/31102
Health systems and achieving the MDGs

Lynn Freedman argues in the journal Development that achieving the MDGs will require massive new investment in the health sector but also notes that success is not only about money but also the way in which the connection between health and development is constructed. She writes: "This is the hidden opportunity of the MDGs: With health recognized as a central part of a wider development agenda, we have a chance to push past the conventional target-based public health approach and to re-ground health policy in the most critical debates of the day, including globalization, human security, equity, human rights, and poverty reduction."

Human rights and global health
Pogge, Thomas W. (2005), Metaphilosophy 36 (1-2), 182-209

"One-third of all human lives end in early death from poverty-related causes. Most of these premature deaths are avoidable through global institutional reforms that would eradicate extreme poverty...The rules should be redesigned so that the development of any new drug is rewarded in proportion to its impact on the global disease burden...The existing medical-patent regime (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights - TRIPS - as supplemented by bilateral agreements) is severely unjust - and its imposition a human-rights violation on account of the avoidable mortality and morbidity it foreseeably produces."

Does AIDS threaten the right to land?

There are between 500 and 700 AIDS-related deaths in Kenya every day. Beyond this tragedy, the HIV/AIDS epidemic creates problems in many aspects of social and economic life. One such problem is decreased security of land tenure. There are dramatic accounts of AIDS widows and orphans being chased from their land and many more that tell of an increased sense of tenure insecurity due to HIV/AIDS. Is this the whole story of the relationship between HIV/AIDS and land rights? Research sponsored by the Department for International Development (UK) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations examines the relationship between HIV/AIDS and land rights in three Kenyan districts.

Global right to health campaign launched

The People's Health Movement, an international organisation of health activists, launched a new global campaign on the right to health at its second assembly in Cuenca, Ecuador, held from 18 to 23 July. Assembly delegates from many countries attested to the campaign's importance. Increasing erosion in access to universal health care, growth of unregulated private providers, and declines in public funding are leaving millions of people without insured services.

AIDS in Uganda: the human-rights dimension
The Lancet 2005; 365:2075-2076

"It is time to shift the debate over HIV prevention in Uganda. Rather than focusing on the precise combination of A, B, and C that contributed to the country's HIV decline, researchers should condemn censorship of life-saving HIV/AIDS information and discrimination against vulnerable populations such as lesbians and gays. It is bad enough that the USA is exporting ignorance and prejudice to countries already devastated by HIV. Researchers should not ignore these human-rights violations by focusing on the wrong issue." (requires registration)

Brazil and Access to HIV/AIDS Drugs: A Question of Human Rights and Public Health
American Journal of Public Health

This article explores the relationship between public health and human rights using as an example the Brazilian policy on free and universal access to antiretroviral medicines for people living with HIV/AIDS. The Brazilian response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which arose from initiatives in both civil society and the governmental sector, followed the process of the democratization of the country. If the Brazilian experience may not be easily transferred to other realities, the model of the Brazilian response may nonetheless serve as an inspiration to finding appropriate and life-saving solutions in other national contexts. (abstract only)

Pages