233737 Working with Right Holders and Duty Bearers to operationalize Right Based Approaches to Health: The experience of CARE in Peru

Tuesday, November 9, 2010 : 3:10 PM - 3:30 PM

Ariel Frisancho, MSc, MD , CARE Peru, Lima, Peru
Human rights, and in particular, the right to the health, are at the heart of CARE International's work. CARE's understanding is that people are often trapped in a cycle of poverty not mainly due to lack of assets and skills, but because of systemic social exclusion, marginalization, and discrimination, set within a context of systems and structures that perpetuate poverty. Poverty stems from political, social, economic, and environmental factors at the community, regional (sub-national), national and global levels. Supporting the realization of the right to health for the poor requires not only direct actions to improve their health status, but also addressing the underlying and systemic factors and power imbalances that impact on health, including ensuring changes in public policies. It requires working with both rights-holders – the poor and marginalized, and their representative organizations - and duty-bearers, from the state (authorities, Congress, public officers and health workers) and private sector, including other cooperation agencies and key stakeholders (i.e. political parties). The presentation will give a view on the way CARE is applying this approach in practice, with examples drawn mainly from CARE's work in Peru, where two of the authors have been working over recent years. It outlines CARE's framework for rights-based approaches and gives examples of application in its health program in Peru. The presentation comments on evidence that a rights-based approach can lead to increased impact of work to tackle poverty and social exclusion, as well as some principal lessons learned and remaining challenges.

Learning Areas:
Advocacy for health and health education
Diversity and culture
Program planning
Provision of health care to the public
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
By the end of the session participants will be able to: 1. Know how a rights-based approach to health could be implemented, with some concrete examples from the practice. 2. Know how rights-based approaches challenge unjust power inequities. 3. Analyze how a rights-based approach could lead to increased impact of work to tackle power and social exclusion.

Keywords: Human Rights, Poverty

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: design and implement this program
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.