O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law
 

Posts tagged UN

Juan E. Méndez, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, and Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Punishment Reports on Torture and Health-care Settings: The Case of Palliative Care

Mar20
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Paula Avila
Photograph by Mark Garten/UN

Photograph by Mark Garten/UN

This post was written by Francisco J. Quintana (Legal Intern from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella) and Paula Avila Guillen (Institute Associate) of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. Any questions or comments about this post can be directed to fjq2@law.georgetown.edu  or pa390@law.georgetown.edu.

           Juan E. Méndez, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, and Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Punishment recently presented his 2013 report. [1] In this report, he addresses a wide variety of topics, including a section analyzing different forms of abuse in health-care settings. The report has been broadly covered by the press. Yet, most of the press reports seem to concentrate on just one specific point-Méndez’s arguments regarding restrictions on access and absolute bans on abortion as violating the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment. In this post, we would like to concentrate on another important point analyzed in the report-palliative care.

           According to the World Health Organization (WHO), palliative care is understood as “an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual.”[2] In his report, Méndez highlights that “5.5 billion people live in countries with low or no access to controlled medicines and have no or insufficient access to treatment for moderate to severe pain.”  He adds that “83 per cent of the world population has either no or inadequate access to treatment for moderate to severe pain.” READ MORE »

Posted in Global Health, Human Rights - Tagged , , , ,

New avenue for Litigating the Right to Health – Optional Protocol to the ICESCR comes into force

Feb09
2013 Leave a Comment Written by O’Neill Institute

This post was written by Oscar A. Cabrera, Eric Friedman, and Brian Honermann, all from the O’Neill Institute.

On 5 February, 2013, Uruguay – following quickly on the heels of Portugal – became the 10th country to ratify the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). In accordance with article 18(1) of the Optional Protocol, this means the Optional Protocol will come into force on 5 May, 2013.

The Optional Protocol empowers the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR) to receive communications (complaints) from individuals or groups of individuals claiming to be victims of violations of their rights as protected by the ICESCR against countries who have ratified the Optional Protocol. As it stands, these are: Argentina, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mongolia, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, and Uruguay. In addition, under Articles 10 and 11, ratifying countries may permit the CESCR to receive inter-state complaints against the country and to conduct inquiries into allegations of grave or systemic violations of economic, social, or cultural rights by a state party. Thus far, only El Salvador and Portugal have acceded to these procedures.

READ MORE »

Posted in Uncategorized - Tagged ,

Our Recent Publications in Global Health Law

Feb06
2013 Leave a Comment Written by O’Neill Institute

2012 was a busy year for us all. Below are some of our most recent publications on Global Health Law. 

Feel free to explore these highlighted works and visit our publications page for additional journals, studies, articles and more.

 

tfc toolkitO’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. 2012. Tobacco Industry Strategy in Latin American Courts: A Litigation Guide. Toolkit (Spanish) Toolkit (English)

The ratification of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) by 15 countries in Latin America has played a central role in generating momentum for strong tobacco control laws at the municipal, provincial and national levels – even in the few countries that have not yet ratified the treaty.

The tobacco industry has correspondingly stepped up two related efforts. First, it is spending substantial resources to sway lawmakers against passing effective tobacco control laws. Second, where its efforts to dilute or weaken tobacco control laws fail, it turns to the courts, often deploying the same or similar arguments based on certain purported “rights.” These “rights” relate to the advertising and marketing of its products, the “rights” of citizens to consume those products in public or occupational spaces, and the “rights” of proprietors and employers to permit such consumption. READ MORE »

Posted in Uncategorized - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Malaria Elimination and Eradication: A Look Back at Our 2012 O’Neill Institute Colloquium

Jan23
2013 Leave a Comment Written by O’Neill Institute

Malaria

In the spirit of looking back and reviewing the work of the O’Neill Institute, we would like to share two presentations with you from our most recent O’Neill Institute Colloquium, David Bowen, “Malaria Elimination: Politics and Practicalities” and Joel Breman, “Eradicating Malaria: The Holy Grail of Tropical Medicine.” READ MORE »

Posted in Uncategorized - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Call for U.N. Accountability for Cholera in Post-Earthquake Haiti – Part IV: Capital Hill Considers Future of Cholera in Haiti

Feb06
2012 2 Comments Written by O’Neill Institute

In response to the second anniversary of Haiti’s January 12, 2010 earthquake, this post is the fourth and final in a four-part series examining the implications of ongoing efforts to establish U.N. accountability for allegedly causing Haiti’s deadly cholera epidemic in the months following the events of January 12, 2010. This post was authored by O’Neill Institute Research Associate, J.P. Shuster, with support from O’Neill Institute Law Fellow, Ana Ayala.

Concern for the outbreak of cholera in Haiti, which has now killed 7,001 Haitians and infected over 522,000 others since it began in late October of 2010, reached the U.S. Congress late last month. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Representatives Barbara Lee (D-CA), Yvette Clarke (D-NY) and Donald Payne (D-NJ), as well as a collective of concerned non-governmental organizations, known as the Haiti Advocacy Working Group (HAWG), sponsored a briefing entitled “Health and Cholera” in conjunction with the second anniversary of Haiti’s devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake on January 12, 2010. Panelists at the briefing included Ambassador Eric Goosby, the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator; Dr. Jon Andrus, the Deputy Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO); Dr. Jordan W. Tappero, Director of the Health Systems Reconstruction Office at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Dr. Ralph Ternier, the Director of Community Health at Zanmi Lasante (ZL); the Haitian sister organization of Partners in Health (PIH); and Dr. Mark Weisbrot, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). READ MORE »

Posted in Global Health - Tagged

A Call for U.N. Accountability for Cholera in Post-Earthquake Haiti – Part III: Raising U.N. Disease Prevention Standards

Jan28
2012 Leave a Comment Written by O’Neill Institute

In response to the second anniversary of Haiti’s January 12, 2010 earthquake, this post is the third in a four-part series examining the implications of ongoing efforts to establish U.N. accountability for allegedly causing Haiti’s deadly cholera epidemic in the months following the events of January 12, 2010. This post was authored by O’Neill Institute Research Associate, J.P. Shuster, with support from O’Neill Institute Law Fellow, Ana Ayala.

The second anniversary of Haiti’s devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake passed earlier this month, perhaps expectedly, without it receiving a fraction of the global media attention and international support that accompanied the sufferings experienced on January 12, 2010. Yet the aftermath of that traumatic event and the harrowing days that followed remain a reality for Haitians. Included in the litany of those miseries is an ongoing cholera epidemic that started just ten months after the earthquake. The epidemic has now killed nearly 7,000 people, infected 520,000 others and continues to cause 200 infections per day. What is more, multiple scientific investigations have demonstrated that U.N. peacekeepers with MINUSTAH, the peacekeeping mission in Haiti, likely exposed Haitians to the water-born illness inadvertently via negligent maintenance of sewerage facilities at a Nepalese camp. Based on that evidence, a Haitian non-governmental organization, the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), and its U.S. partner, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), filed on November 3, 2011, a petition with the Claims Unit of the Office of the United Nations Secretary-General in Haiti on behalf of 5,000 victims of cholera and their families.[1] Yet the U.N. has refused to accept responsibility for transporting the disease to Haiti or provide compensation to victims of the epidemic. 

This series has primarily considered the problem of U.N. accountability for the international spread of disease. Part I of this series explored the mounting evidence against the U.N. that suggests the international body negligently, if unintentionally, transported cholera to Haiti through infected Nepalese peacekeeping personnel. Part II of this series took a close look at the immunity provisions that could pose a major challenge to Haiti’s cholera victims from obtaining effective judicial relief from the U.N. READ MORE »

Posted in Global Health, Uncategorized - Tagged ,

A Call for U.N. Accountability for Cholera in Post-Earthquake Haiti

Jan05
2012 Leave a Comment Written by O’Neill Institute

In response to the second anniversary of Haiti’s January 12, 2010 earthquake, this post begins a four-part weekly series that will examine the implications of ongoing efforts to establish U.N. accountability for allegedly causing Haiti’s deadly cholera epidemic in the months following the events of January 12, 2010. This first post was authored by O’Neill Institute Research Associate, J.P. Shuster.

 On December 9, 2011, in conjunction with International Human Rights Day and the 63rd anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, several thousand Haitians assembled outside a U.N. peacekeeping base in the city of St. Marc, located sixty miles north of Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince, emphatically chanting “human rights belong to Haitians too.” The U.N. peacekeeping mission, known by its acronym MINUSTAH, had arrived in Haiti in 2004 to calm political turmoil surrounding the ouster of Haiti’s former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But the latest tumult arose from allegations that a Nepalese contingent of MINUSTAH had introduced a devastating strain of cholera into the Haitian population ten months after the earthquake by allowing human waste to flow from a poorly maintained septic tank at the battalion’s base in the town of Meille into a tributary of Haiti’s largest and most vital river, the Artibonite.

Prior to October 2010, Haiti had not documented a single case of cholera in over 100 years.[1] However, suddenly, scores of people living in the Mirebalais region down river from Meille began experiencing vomiting and diarrhea so catastrophic that many died within hours of presenting symptoms. Two thousand people died in the first thirty days alone. At present, Haiti’s Ministère de la Santé Publique et de la Population has reported that the water-born disease has already infected roughly 515,000 people – about five percent of Haiti’s total population – and killed nearly 7,000 people since it was detected last year.[2] Haiti, which is still very much dealing with the devastation of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake of January 2010, now also faces the largest active cholera epidemic in the world.[3] READ MORE »

Posted in Global Health, Uncategorized - Tagged ,

Unanswered Questions of the UN Summit on Non-communicable Diseases

Oct01
2011 2 Comments Written by Eric A. Friedman

 The United Nation’s High-Level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs), convened at UN Headquarters September 19-20, brought with it high expectations. The only previous UN General Assembly Special Sessions on a health issue had been on HIV/AIDS, with the first, in 2001, credited with helping spur the global AIDS response. NCDs – the four categories that the summit addressed being heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory illnesses – already are responsible for more than 60% deaths globally [Political Declaration, para. 14], and are the leading cause of death even in many developing countries. They are on track to be responsible for 70% of deaths in developing countries by 2020 [Abdesslam Boutayeb and Saber Boutayeb, “The Burden of Non Communicable Diseases in Developing Countries,” International Journal for Equity in Health 4(1) (2005): 2]. 

Until now low on the global health agenda – consider that a mere 3% of WHO’s 2010-2011 budget was programmed to address NCDs – NCDs are certainly worthy of a special session at the United Nations. The question is, will the summit mobilize a global response against NCDs?

The honest answer may be the least satisfying: time will tell. READ MORE »

Posted in Global Health, Tobacco, Trade, WHO - Tagged

Promises of Progress from the High-Level AIDS Summit at UN

Jun18
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Eric A. Friedman

At last week’s high-level United Nations AIDS review, world leaders adopted a Political Declaration that indeed included a commitment to having 15 million people on AIDS treatment by 2015, among other targets aimed at real progress. Along with the commitment on AIDS treatment, the other headline from the conference was the commitment to work towards eliminating vertical transmission by 2015.

Importantly, the Declaration also specifically addressed the need for enhanced prevention efforts among marginalized populations, including men who have sex with men and people who inject drugs. This was the first of a high-level UN declaration on HIV/AIDS explicitly mentioned men who have sex with men. The Declaration also set a target of reducing HIV transmission among people who inject drugs by 50% by 2015 — though some advocates were concerned about how the Declaration addressed this population, as UNAIDS has called for the elimination of this mode of transmission. More troubling, the Declaration only weakly called for countries to give “consideration to, as appropriate,” harm reduction programs, despite their proven effectiveness. The science is clear; the Declaration had no reason for being timid.

The Declaration also included other commitments that, if adhered to, will advance human rights of discriminated against groups, including helping to meet the needs of women and girls, and promoting their full enjoyment of human rights. And states committed “to national HIV and AIDS strategies that promote and protect human rights, including programmes aimed at eliminating stigma and discrimination against people living with and affected by HIV, including their families, including through sensitizing the police and judges, training health-care workers in non-discrimination, confidentiality and informed consent, supporting national human rights learning campaigns, legal literacy and legal services, as well as monitoring the impact of the legal environment on HIV prevention, treatment, care and support.” It is critical that these efforts encompass all marginalized populations at heightened risk of HIV infection.

The Declaration committed countries ”to redouble efforts to strengthen health systems, including primary health care.” This is a necessary part of the expanded AIDS response.

The question now is whether the political will and funding will follow these commitments — which included increasing AIDS funding. If so, the world will have made real progress by 2015 in fighting AIDS and advancing human rights. If not, then the failure to keep the promises of 2011 will be another stain on the global conscience.

Posted in Global Health, Uncategorized, WHO - Tagged ,

World Health Assembly 2011 Outcomes and United Nations AIDS Review Preview

Jun07
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Eric A. Friedman

Will the world’s premier health organization be able to reform itself to revive its global health leadership in the years ahead? Such was undoubtedly the question on the mind of health officials and civil society from around the world as they attended the 64th World Health Assembly (WHA) last month, the World Health Organization’s annual meeting of its governance body, comprised of all 193 of its Member States.

With WHO reform the marquee item on a crowded agenda that touched on many of the most pressing global health issues, this seemed destined to be a historic WHA.

And in some ways, it was – though at least in part, due to another issue. As the 2003 WHA secured its place in history by adopting the first global health treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and the 2005 WHA adopted the revised International Health Regulations, the 2011 WHA set the stage for greater international cooperation in responding to novel influenza viruses by adopting the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework.

Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework

Despite being non-binding, and frankly underwhelming, it does for the first time set up a three-pronged global process of increase access of people in developing countries to vaccines and antiviral medication: 1) voluntary vaccine donations by vaccine manufacturers to a WHO stockpile to be used primarily in developing countries; 2) tiered pricing for vaccines and antivirals, and; 3) technology transfer for vaccines and antivirals. Manufacturers are also expected to contribute financially to support WHO’s global influenza surveillance and response system. READ MORE »

Posted in Global Health, Uncategorized - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

The views reflected in this blog are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent those of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law or Georgetown University. This blog is solely informational in nature, and not intended as a substitute for competent legal advice from a licensed and retained attorney in your state or country.
See the full disclaimer and terms of use.