Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #120688

Leonard S. Rubenstein, JD, Physicians for Human Rights, 1156 15th Street NW, Suite 1001, Washington, DC 22301, 202 728 5335, lrubenstein@phrusa.org

The idea of health as a human rights is a powerful one and the dimensions of the right to the highest attainable standard of health has gained greater clarity than ever before is setting out the obligations states. At the same time, strategies to assure compliance with the right to health pose significant challenges to human rights organizations. The most common strategy used by these organizations to assure compliance with human rights organizations- documenting violations and exposing them through the media as a means of bringing pressure to conform go human rights norms – will play a major role in advancing economic, social and cultural rights; at the same time, new strategies are also critical to obtaining resources and assuring that systems are developed to fulfill rights. New skills may also be necessary to carry them out. This session will review some of these challenges, , particularly identifying some of the relevant differences between methods for advancing civil and political rights on the one hand and economic, social and cultural rights on the other. A set of proposed strategies and competencies for international human rights organizations to advance economic, social and cultural rights will be identified and discussed.

Learning Objectives:

• To identify challenges to assuring compliance with the right to health.
• How human rights organizations can meet these challenges.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Recorded presentation