Health and Human Rights最新文献

The COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on long-standing constitutional violations within the US correctional system, particularly affecting vulnerable populations such as senior inmates. By analyzing the impact of COVID-19 in prisons, the challenges faced in implementing preventive strategies, and the specific vulnerabilities of elderly prisoners, this paper identifies potential constitutional infringements experienced by senior inmates during the pandemic and the physical, mental, and social effects of the pandemic on this population. Specifically, this paper aims to bridge the fields of constitutional law, prison reform, elder law, and the COVID-19 pandemic by examining the impact of the pandemic on the rights of senior inmates under the US Constitution's Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The objective is to examine whether potential violations have occurred and propose actions to prevent violations in the future while ensuring accountability and redress if such violations occur. To address such violations, the paper emphasizes the need for increased sanitation measures and decarceration as preventive measures in future public health crises.

In 2022, the global commercial surrogacy industry was valued at approximately US$14 billion. This paper explores the issue of surrogacy to reveal how international human rights standards and labor laws treat reproduction as work, building on previous scholarship analyzing similar framing at the grassroots level in Mexico. I argue that the failure to recognize surrogacy as labor is rooted in three lacunae: (1) contemporary policies and practices around surrogacy globally pay little attention to the well-being and rights fulfillment of surrogates themselves, particularly the economic rights of surrogates; (2) the stigma of surrogacy as sexualized care work results in neglect of the labor rights of surrogates in mainstream economic rights discourses; and (3) relevant international rights law has not yet addressed the economic rights of surrogates, nor has it effectively articulated the interdependent relationship between economic rights and reproductive rights. Lastly, I discuss where reproductive rights and economic rights overlap in existing human rights conventions and standards and what possibilities these offer for articulating the interdependence of reproductive and economic rights and for advancing the labor rights of surrogates.

Thousands of Palestinian prisoners are held in Israeli prisons without trial. For some of them, engaging in hunger strikes is the last resort in opposing unlawful detention and inhumane prison conditions. While mainstream bioethics deliberation, reasonable arguments, and international legal and medical professional declarations prohibit force-feeding, local ethical deliberations, professional medical guidelines, and legislation allow the use of medical judgment and clinical ethics committees to force-feed these prisoners. Until now, Israeli physicians have refused to do so, but this may change in the future. The international medical and bioethics communities need to stand behind these medical professionals, as well as prisoners. Clinical ethics committees in Israel must choose whether they serve the interests of these prisoner-patients and perhaps their political or human rights agenda, or whether they are subservient to an unjust, oppressive regime.

Economic policies that concentrate wealth and aggravate socioeconomic inequalities often have negative impacts on human rights. For example, evidence points to the unequal impact of austerity measures-such as the defunding and privatizing of health care-on already disadvantaged groups and individuals. Despite its detrimental impacts, austerity often appears as a necessary evil in times when difficult choices must be made. Justified through arguments of trickle-down economics to support growth, the realization of human rights is postponed. Human rights are sidelined as guidelines that inform rather than limit such measures. The assumption that wealth concentration and the consequent reduction of human rights standards may be justified suggests a problematic conception of equality in human rights law. In this paper, I critically examine the way that this assumption informs the exclusion of distributive considerations from the scope of equality within human rights law. I identify and evaluate the emerging interpretations of equality beyond the legal-technical notion of equal treatment and the prohibition of discrimination and the extent to which equality in human rights may take on a distributive function in combating policies of wealth concentration such as austerity.

Given the persistence of health inequities in the United States, scholars and health professionals alike have turned to the social determinants of health (SDH) framework to understand the overlapping factors that produce and shape these inequities. However, there is scant empirical literature on how frontline health and social service workers perceive and apply the SDH framework, or related movements such as the right to health, in their daily practice. Our study seeks to bridge this gap by applying constructs from the sociological imagination and structural competency (an emerging paradigm in health professions' education) to understand the perspectives and experiences of social work case managers, community health workers, legal advocates, and mental health counselors at a maternal and child health center in a large US city. This frontline workforce displayed strong sociological imagination, elements of structural competency, and engagement with the principles of the right to health. Workers shared reflections on the SDH framework in ways that signaled promising opportunities for frontline workers to link with the global movement for the right to health. We offer a novel approach to understanding the relationships between frontline worker perspectives on and experiences with the SDH, sociological imagination, structural competency, and the right to health.

In introducing the Mental Health and Wellbeing Bill of 2022 into Parliament in Victoria, Australia, the state government claimed that the new legislation "delivers on the vision for rights-based mental health and wellbeing laws." This paper examines the new legislation in light of both local human rights legislation and international human rights law. Drawing primarily on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act of 2006, this paper argues that while the new legislation is not, in fact, rights based, it does represent some rights-related improvements over existing legislation. The paper concludes with a discussion of how rights-based legislation could be applied to the Victorian context, using the latest guidance from the World Health Organization and the United Nations.

This paper reflects on the right to health care from the Indigenous research paradigm. We analyze the case of an Aymara wise warmi (woman) who died after the Chilean health care system failed to provide culturally appropriate care. In the wake of her death, our cooperative launched an interdisciplinary and collaborative research project in an effort to file an administrative complaint against the family health center that treated her. We explore the events surrounding her treatment and death, as well as the institutional written response. Our work elucidates the significant differences that exist between institutional and Indigenous perspectives on what constitutes a violation of the right to health care. We demonstrate that in order to establish the existence of such violations, Aymara people are compelled to develop evidence using a naturalistic scientific and legal framework that does not coincide with their ontology. Consequently, some events and violations are not legally recognized as culturally inappropriate health care unless they are viewed through an Indigenous lens. Finally, we reflect on the problem of evidence production, specifically regarding the right to health care. We argue that the fight for the right to health care can benefit from the Indigenous research paradigm-not only for the benefit of Indigenous people but also to provide culturally appropriate care to all people.