232896 Public Health Litigation for Human Rights Realization: The Development of the World Health Organization - O'Neill Institute Health and Human Rights Database

Tuesday, November 9, 2010 : 9:10 AM - 9:30 AM

Benjamin Mason Meier, JD, LLM, PhD , Assistant Professor of Global Health Policy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC
     
Through the cooperative efforts of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law (O'Neill Institute), a searchable health and human rights database has been developed to provide a systematic survey of human rights litigation for health. This presentation examines the development of the WHO-O'Neill Institute Health and Human Rights Database, assessing its impact in translating international human rights into national health policy.

An accountability movement has arisen at the intersection of health and human rights, empowering individuals to raise human rights claims for health and providing rights-based enforcement in national courts. This expanding case law—based upon international human rights standards, often codified under national law—is leading to tangible reforms in national health policy. As this jurisprudence flourishes, human rights will elevate from principle to practice, transforming ambiguous declarations into legal obligations and programmatizing international law through national policy.

This presentation describes the researchers' comprehensive assessment of the scope and content of health litigation claims pursuant to human rights standards. Categorized on the basis of human rights and health issues, the organization of cases in the WHO-O'Neill Institute Health and Human Rights Database allows for comparative legal analysis of similar health claims in different country contexts. This comparative analysis of national approaches can provide public health practitioners, policy-makers, and scholars with resources to understand these rights-based claims, develop ‘best practices' in human rights enforcement, and harmonize practices conducive to the effective realization of human rights in health.

Learning Areas:
Advocacy for health and health education

Learning Objectives:
1. Analyze the pathways through which international human rights standards are translated into national human right litigation. 2. Identify the subject matter of litigation claims at the intersection of health and human rights; 3. Assess how researchers have compiled and categorized health and human rights litigation throughout the world; and 4. Describe the major applications of a health and human rights database to advancing rights-based public health policy.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am qualified to present because I oversaw the development of the WHO-O’Neill Health and Human Rights Database, upon which the presentation will be drawn.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 4008.0: Accountability Mechanisms and Human Rights