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Posts in category WHO

Summer Conversation Series with Mónica Roa: “Women’s Rights in Latin America: Impact of Strategic Litigation”

Jul16
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Paula Avila

“Women’s Link has afforded me the privilege of constructing new paradigms in my work, of understanding our role as the new generation of feminists who use the law as an agent of social change to make gender justice a reality. The challenge of constructing an organization with its own principles is a constant reminder that change begins at home and that the best reward is to see young men and women finding the inspiration to follow a professional path dedicated to equality and justice, whether at Women’s Link or wherever it is that they may find it.” –Mónica Roa.

On June 12, 2012, as part of the Summer Conversations Series, the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law invited Ms. Monica Roa, Director of Programs at Women’s Link Worldwide, to speak about Women’s Rights in Latin America: Impact of Strategic Litigation.  Women’s Link Worldwide is an international human rights organization “working to ensure that gender equality is a reality around the world, through the implementation of international human rights standards and strategic work with the courts, including strategic litigation.”[1]

Ms. Roa began by showing a video recounting the strategies behind the petition she filed in 2005 before the Constitutional Court of Colombia that ultimately decriminalized abortion in the country and legalized it under three circumstances: rape; malformations incompatible with life outside the uterus; and when the women’s life or health –physical and mental- is in danger.

 Ms. Roa explained how the petition was Women’s Link’s first “high impact litigation” project and the importance of first “mapping” the political and legal situation in Colombia to develop the litigation strategy.  In the process, they realized that if they asked for the complete legalization of abortion, it would have likely received a negative response, given the political and legal situation in Colombia at the time. Therefore, requesting the legalization of abortion under specific circumstances, made the legalization of abortion more achievable. READ MORE »

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

U.S. Congressional Briefing “Cholera and the Human Right to Health in Post-Earthquake Haiti”

May10
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Ana S. Ayala

In October of 2010, less than ten months after being hit by a devastating earthquake, Haiti experienced a cholera epidemic that quickly spread throughout the small nation. The waterborne disease has now killed at least 7,050 Haitians and sickened over 531,000 others. Meanwhile, nearly half a million earthquake victims remain without adequate housing, and Haitians continue to face one of the most challenging clean water and sanitation situations in the world. As the rainy season sets in, the country is experiencing a notable increase in the number of deaths attributed to cholera, according to the UN.

On April 18, 2012, the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CESCR) co-sponsored a U.S. Congressional Briefing that examined U.S. and international efforts to address what has become the world’s worst active cholera epidemic. With U.S. Representative John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) giving introductory remarks and U.S. Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) giving concluding remarks, the panel of speakers was composed of Dr. Luiz Augusto Galvão, Manager of Sustainable Development and Environmental Health Area at the Pan-American Health Organization/World Health Organization; Donna Barry, Director of Policy and Advocacy at Partners In Health; Brian Concannon, Jr., Director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti; Mario López-Garelli, Senior Human Rights Specialist at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Inter-American Commission); and Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of CESCR. The briefing was organized and moderated by J.P. Shuster, research associate at the O’Neill Institute. The group of panelists discussed urgent measures needed to contain the spread of the disease and the longer-term proposals for preventing cholera from becoming endemic to Haiti, as well as the role of international legal mechanisms for protecting health and human rights violations in Haiti’s greater post-earthquake context.

Click here to watch the briefing

Public Health Perspective

Donna Barry set the context of the discussion by recalling that health and water are basic human rights and that it is the government’s responsibility to provide access to both, which is why Partners In Health’s work in focuses on strengthening government systems. Barry emphasized the importance of recognizing that, prior to the earthquake, Haiti had the worst health indicators and worst access to clean water in the Western Hemisphere and had one of the world’s worst sanitation systems. Barry also highlighted Partners in Health’s recently launched Haiti Cholera Vaccine Project. The project aims to reduce incidence of disease and transmission and starts with the vaccination of 50,000 individuals in a rural community in Saint-Marc. The vaccination project is intended as a complementary measure to prevention and treatment efforts and is part of Partners in Health’s recommended five-point comprehensive response to combat cholera in Haiti: 1) strengthen water and sanitation infrastructure; 2) identify and treat all those with cholera symptoms; 3) role out a safe, affordable, and effective cholera vaccine; 4) strengthen Haiti’s public health system; and 5) improve effectiveness of foreign assistance to Haiti. READ MORE »

Posted in Global Health, Resources - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

US law and possible Palestinian WHO membership: Implications for WHO funding

Nov23
2011 Leave a Comment Written by O’Neill Institute

This post was co-authored by Eric A. Friedman and Professor Lawrence O. Gostin.

At the end of October, the United States announced that it would cease funding UNESCO, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, when the agency voted to accept the Palestinian application for full membership, which will make Palestine UNESCO’s 195th member. This immediately raised questions about US funding for other UN agencies in which the Palestinian Authority may seek membership. Under current US law, if the PA seeks full membership in the World Health Organization (WHO) – as reportedly it is interested in doing – the consequences for global health could be dire.

The 1990 and 1994 U.S. laws that led to the cut-off of funding for UNESCO, and could do the same for WHO, bar any U.S. contributions to the UN or any affiliated agency that grants full membership to an organization “without the internationally recognized attributes of statehood,” or to the UN or any specialized agency that grants full membership to the Palestinian Liberation Organization: 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 - Tagged ,

A debate about the international criminalization of falsification of medicines: responding to Attaran, Bate and Kendall

Aug25
2011 2 Comments Written by Benn McGrady

Neil Boister and Benn McGrady

In a recent article in Journal of International Criminal Justice, we responded to a proposal by Amir Attaran, Roger Bate and Megan Kendall that a treaty should be negotiated under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO). More specifically, we responded to the suggestion that a treaty for the criminalization of falsifying medicines should be negotiated under the auspices of the WHO.

We argued that Attaran, Bate and Kendall had failed to consider questions of institutional choice. Working on the assumption that international legalization is an appropriate response to the problem of falsified medicines, we argued that the ‘WHO is not the only forum in which these issues may be addressed and nor is it clear that negotiations under the auspices of the WHO would be better than negotiating an optional protocol to [the UN Convention on Transnational Organized Crime] UNTOC or pursuing a joint initiative of the WHO and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).’ We stressed that if criminalization through international law is the approach to be adopted, it may be more appropriate to locate negotiations within the pre-existing UN criminal justice framework. READ MORE »

Posted in FCTC, Global Health, Trade

Workshop on Legal issues in Tobacco Control for Latin American Attorneys

Jul22
2011 Leave a Comment Written by O’Neill Institute

The O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, in collaboration with the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, and the Framework Convention Alliance for Tobacco Control organized a workshop on Law and Tobacco Control in Rio de Janeiro on June 15-17, 2011.

This training workshop is part of a legal capacity building strategy, underway since 2008, to empower tobacco control efforts in Latin America. There were more than twenty participants from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.  Participants were from academia, government and civil society organizations.

The workshop addressed topics such as: i) the role of judicial tribunals and strategic litigation on in the area of tobacco control, ii) consumer protection law and tobacco control, iii) packaging and labeling of tobacco products, iv) labor law and tobacco control and v) intellectual property rights, investment law and the right to health with regards to tobacco regulation. Among other presenters, Oscar Cabrera and Juan Carballo, of the O’Neill Institute highlighted tobacco regulations’ connections with the right to health and coordinated the discussion about litigation strategies in Latin America.

 Representatives from the organizing institutions: Oscar Cabrera (Deputy Director at the O´Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University), Jonás Romo (International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease), Patricia Sosa (Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids), and Luiz Antonio Santini (Aliança de Controle do Tabagismo)

READ MORE »

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

The new antismoking warning labels: a necessary step in the right direction

Jul11
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Juan Carballo

On June 21, health officials at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a series of nine graphic color warning labels that the tobacco industry will be required to include on the top-half of all cigarette packages produced after September 2012. Some of the images are quite explicit in their illustration of the harmful effects of smoking, while others are less vivid, including one portraying a cartoon-depiction of a baby being exposed to a mother’s second-hand smoke, or another of a man wearing a T-shirt that proclaims “I QUIT.” In addition to including images that are meant to inform consumers of tobacco products about the detrimental health consequences of smoking and exposure to second-hand smoke, the packs will also display a toll-free telephone number for smoking cessation services.

One of the approved images

In response to the FDA’s announcement, the four leading companies in the tobacco industry began threatening legal action on the basis that these new images and warning labels would infringe upon their property and free-speech rights by frustrating brand displays, vilifying tobacco companies, and disgracing smokers. The new labels were released as a requirement under the new antismoking legislation, which was signed into law two years ago by President Obama, and which provides the FDA with the power to regulate, though not ban, tobacco products. Despite the tobacco industry’s claims that the consequences of the new law are too intrusive, under both the national and international legal regime, the measures taken by the anti-smoking legislation are not only legal, but also necessary, to effectively curb the use of tobacco products and inform the public about the dangers of smoking.  READ MORE »

Posted in FCTC, FDA, National Healthcare, Uncategorized - 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 - Tagged , ,

The World Health Assembly: Reforming the WHO and Global Governance for Health

Jun01
2011 1 Comment Written by O’Neill Institute

Note: An earlier version of this post, drafted by Eric A. Friedman, O’Neill Institute Law Fellow and Lawrence O. Gostin, O’Neill Institute Faculty Director, was disseminated as an O’Neill Institute Briefing on May 18, 2011.

In late May, the World Health Assembly (WHA) discussed an ambitious agenda of reform of the World Health Organization (WHO) and global governance for health—the norms, institutions, and processes that collectively shape the health of the world’s population. This post discusses WHA agenda items of major importance.

WHO Reform
The WHO faces at least a $300 million budget deficit and finds itself in an increasingly complex global health architecture characterized by great passion and innovation, but also fragmentation and lack of global leadership. Recognizing the need for reform to be more relevant to contemporary realities and to assume its proper global health leadership role, the World Health Organization is initiating a major reform process.

The WHO reform agenda includes: (1) a proposal for a global stakeholders’ forum to help shape the global health agenda; (2) clearer articulation of WHO’s unique role and functions; and (3) managerial reforms within WHO to increase its accountability to Member States, improve organizational structure, and revise its human resource strategy. One thing to look out for: the risk that as WHO seeks to define and organize itself along particular functions, such key areas as human rights, gender, primary health care, and the social determinants of health, which are officially to be “mainstreamed,” could in practice see their place within WHO downgraded. READ MORE »

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

Welcome to the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law’s Blog!

Jun01
2011 Leave a Comment Written by O’Neill Institute

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law’s blog.  The blog is meant as a forum for thoughtful dialogue on pressing issues in health law and policy.  It will also be an additional venue for us to keep in touch with our friends and colleagues on current events at the O’Neill Institute, including highlights from our robust research program, graduate degree program, fellowship program, and institute scholarship.

Launched in 2007, the O’Neill Institute at Georgetown University has blossomed into the premier academic research center for national and global health law and policy. Our research encompasses a diverse range of national and global health law topics, from health reform in the US and China, tobacco control globally and in Latin America, global infectious and non-communicable disease prevention, and global health governance. The UN Secretary General recently endorsed the founding vision of the O’Neill Institute—a Framework Convention on Global Health.

We hope that the blog helps us keep in touch with old friends, connects us with new colleagues and partners, and serves as a resource for our readers. Sign up for an RSS feed and check back often.

Thank you for your support of the O’Neill Institute and best wishes.

Lawrence O. Gostin
Linda and Timothy O’Neill Professor and Faculty Director
O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law
Georgetown University

Posted in FDA, Global Health, National Healthcare, Resources, Uncategorized - Tagged , , ,

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