The authors mapped the Mozambican legislative and policy responses to domestic violence to analyse their alignment with international treaties and conventions and with each other, using a critical cartography and content analysis. The authors identified a total of fifteen national domestic violence documents of which five were on laws, one on policy and nine institutional strategic/action plans. Most of the national domestic violence documents focused on strategies for assistance/care of victims and prevention of domestic violence. Little focus was found on advocacy, monitoring and evaluation. Mozambique has signed several international and regional treaties and conventions on domestic violence, but the authors found an inconsistency in the alignment of international treaties and conventions with national policies and laws, and a gap in the translation of national policies and laws into strategic plans and multi-sectoral approaches.
Values, Policies and Rights
Most Ugandans are likely to go without essential medicines if the government does not take advantage of the flexibility provisions of the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in the process of enacting the national intellectual property (IP) law. HEPS-Uganda’s review of the draft Industrial Property Bill 2007 established that while the draft bill attempts to incorporate the TRIPS flexibilities, some of them were drafted in a restrictive style such that Uganda may not derive maximum flexibility as envisaged by TRIPS Agreement, the Doha Declaration and other non-legally binding instruments.
Humanitarian crises and migration make girls and women more vulnerable to poor sexual and reproductive health (SRH) outcomes. This mixed-methods study assessed SRH experiences, knowledge and access to services of 260 refugee girls 13-19 years old in the Nakivale settlement, Uganda between March and May 2018. The majority of girls were born in DR Congo and Burundi. the findings showed weak knowledge of SRH and methods for preventing HIV and pregnancy, school days missed due to menstruation and that 30 of the 260 girls were sexually active, of which 11 had experienced forced sexual intercourse. The latter occurred during conflict, in transit or within the camp. The preferred sources for SRH information was parents or guardians, although participants expressed that they were afraid or shy to discuss other sexuality topics apart from menstruation with parents. Only 30% of the female adolescents had ever visited a SRH service centre, mostly to test for HIV and to seek medical aid for menstrual problems. The authors found that adolescent refugee girls lack adequate SRH information, experience poor SRH outcomes including school absence due to menstruation, sexual violence and FGM and recommend comprehensive SRH services including sexuality education, barrier-free access to SRH services and parental involvement for refugee communities.
Health inequalities represent perhaps the most consequential global health challenge and yet they persist despite increased funding and innovative programmes. The United Nations is revising the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that will shape the world for many years to come. What would a transformative post-MDG framework for global health justice look like? A global coalition of civil society and academics - the Joint Action and Learning Initiative on National and Global Responsibilities for Health (JALI) - has formed an international campaign to advocate for a Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH). Recently endorsed by the UN Secretary-General, the FCGH would reimagine global governance for health, offering a new post-MDG vision. This Special Communication describes the key modalities of an FCGH to illustrate how it would improve health and reduce inequalities. The modalities would include defining national responsibilities for the population’s health; defining international responsibilities for reliable, sustainable funding; setting global health priorities; coordinating fragmented activities; reshaping global governance for health; and providing strong global health leadership through the World Health Organisation.
The People's Health Movement (PHM) would like to invite civil society organizations, interested individuals and groups to participate in discussing the possibility of hosting such a campaign in South Africa. It would also contribute to building civil society for the Third People’s Health Assembly, planned for 2010 at an African venue (to be determined). This edition of Critical Health Perspectives sketches the background to the campaign and some of the thinking behind it.
The authors of this paper argue that current forms of co-operation are often ineffective, insufficient and incapable of achieving progressive realisation of the right to health. They propose that, after the many international and regional Commissions, Declarations, and institutional innovations of the last 20 years, the logical next step for the promotion of the right to health is the drafting and enforcement of a Global Framework Convention on Health (GFCH). Significant contemporary international challenges make national health an issue that needs to be protected by global agreements. Such challenges include the international but unequal market for health workers that result in the recruitment of health workers from developing countries and the prohibitive cost of essential medicines and of meeting the health needs and rights of migrants and refugees. Developing countries are struggling to bear these financial burdens. The authors call for a GFCH that broadly sets out national and international duties towards health, health challenges and their cost, and helps make people of low income countries less vulnerable to shifting developed-world priorities.
"The international migration of health workers away from underserved areas in low income countries is increasingly recognised as one of the most profound problems facing health systems, and the safeguarding of health, in these countries. The problem is particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa where the burdens of poverty and underresourcing, infectious disease and, worthy of distinct mention, HIV/AIDS which has infected up to a quarter of the population in some countries, are causing public health systems to break down...The language of human rights is commonly used when describing the motivations of health workers to migrate to seek a better life and to further their careers. But human rights are less commonly invoked to articulate the consequences of their migration, which may include most notably the impact on the right to health of health system users in the country of origin," says the abstract of this paper commissioned by health charity Medact as part of its programme of work on health, poverty and development.
* Read the related paper 'The ‘Skills Drain’ of Health Professionals from the Developing World'
http://www.medact.org/content/Skills%20drain/Mensah%20et%20al.%202005.pdf
One of the most fundamental human rights is the assumption that each person matters, and everyone deserves to be treated with dignity—this is the tenet from which all other human rights flow. Another is that those who are most vulnerable deserve special protection. However, in many developing countries, vast numbers of children are born but never counted, and their health and welfare throughout their lives remains unknown. And because single-mean measures of population health mask inequalities among the best-off and worst-off, the health of vulnerable populations is not effectively documented and acknowledged. Health information systems can play an important role in supporting these rights by documenting and tracking health and health inequities, and by creating a platform for action and accountability.
On the basis of an analysis of popular and medical texts which address a debate over the ethics of clinical drug trials designed mainly for sub-Saharan Africa, this paper argues that the international public health discourse about infant HIV infection in Africa reflects and legitimates a anti-reproductive justice ideology. The author argues that the texts most commonly advance the view that biomedicine, funded from outside Africa with medicines from outside the continent, is the magic bullet that addresses mother and child HIV, avoiding issues of domestic advance in reproductive and sexual rights. This dominant focus is argued to give greater control over HIV to biomedical perspectives and to strengthen right-wing movements against advances in reproductive rights.
The goal of this methodology is to assist in the creation of valid, useful and ultimately meaningful human rights impact assessments. This followed the United Nation’s Special Representative on Human Rights and Business Professor John Ruggie's presentation to the Human Rights Council with a framework for delegating human rights and responsibilities between governments and companies. The process of creating and using HRIA is still in its early phases. Their relevance will depend on a continuing improvement of method, capacity and result which can only be accomplished through the sharing of experience and information between companies and assessors. The methodology looks at HRIA assessment sources, goals, and types. It covers basic concepts and looks provides five steps for implementation: gather project contexts and company information; drawing up a preliminary list of impacted rights; drawing up a preliminary list of impacted right holders; special topics; and inquiry guided by topic catalogue. The methodology offers recommendations for policies, procedures, structures and action. It also provides an appendix of other tools and selected best practices.