A Primary Health Care-Anchored Migrant Right to Health: Insights from a Qualitative Study in Colombia.

In recent years there has been a sustained rise in the number of international migrants, and scholarship and practice have increasingly focused on the relationship between health and migration. However, the entitlement to state-subsidized services for migrants with precarious or irregular legal status, often fleeing distressing living conditions, is typically limited to emergency lifesaving health treatment, with nonstate programs attempting to complement this constrained approach. This paper asks whether a primary health care (PHC) approach could serve as a blueprint for institutional priority-setting and for the realization of human rights obligations to help states meet their core international commitments regarding migrant health rights. I look at the multi-actor response in Colombia-where almost three million Venezuelans have sought to settle and many more have transited during the last nine years-as a case study to explore the possibility of a meaningful PHC-oriented right to health in the migration context. Using human rights law standards and commentaries, I suggest that, with some qualifications, this approach holds promise.

Health and Human Rights | 2024

Rights-Based Approaches to HIV, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.

Health and Human Rights | 2024

Rights-Based PrEP Delivery and Structural Challenges.

Health and Human Rights | 2024

Protecting Distress Migrants' Right to Health in Ecuador: Are Legal Commitments Being Fulfilled?

Ecuador's legal framework promises equitable access to health care for all. However, gaps in coverage are being exacerbated by the nearly 500,000 Venezuelan distress migrants remaining in the country over the past decade. The purpose of our study was to examine how the Ecuadorian health system responds to the needs of migrant populations arriving in poor health conditions. We conducted 28 key informant interviews with government officials, health care providers, and representatives of international cooperation agencies and migrant organizations, and analyzed documents from a related Constitutional Court sentence. We find that despite Ecuador's commitments, significant gaps exist in the implementation of protection mechanisms for distress migrants. Systemic obstacles, such as documentation requirements and exclusion from benefits granted by law, remain. Discriminatory practices and concerns about the allocation of limited resources can further impede access. The Constitutional Court case underscores how the judicialization of health may prompt the government to address distress migrants' right to health and document its progress. Ultimately, more comprehensive approaches are needed to promote a more equitable health system that addresses the specific experiences and needs of distress migrants in Ecuador.

Health and Human Rights | 2024

Conceptualizing the Social Determinants of Mental Health Within an International Human Rights Framework: A Focus on Housing and Employment.

The social determinants of health and international human rights law share many overlapping concerns and goals in promoting human well-being. However, so far they have been developing largely in silos, resulting in calls for greater interdisciplinary collaboration. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the social determinants of health-specifically mental health-can fit within international human rights law conceptually and practically. I argue that the social determinants of mental health and international human rights law are mutually reinforcing. Both are necessary to realize the right to the highest attainable standard of health and its incorporation into domestic law and policy. International human rights law provides an indispensable universal and legally binding framework to realize both the right to health and the social determinants. Likewise, the social determinants enrich and expand international human rights law and challenge it to go further in responding to inequality, power imbalances, and the lifelong impact of adverse childhood experiences (especially in light of the early onset of mental ill-health). I use housing and employment as examples of how to deepen this conceptual and practical relationship.

Health and Human Rights | 2024

The Spirit of Human Rights: Universal Health Coverage in Makueni County, Kenya.

In view of the United Nations' goal to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) by 2030, this paper investigates MakueniCare, the highly successful UHC program in Makueni County, Kenya, to reveal the spirit of human rights underlying it. Drawing on international, Kenyan, and Makueni County law and policy, as well as 30 interviews with government and civil society leaders in health care policy and programming at the national and county levels, we examine the human rights law and principles that underlie the adoption and implementation of MakueniCare. We first set out key human rights principles grounded in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the 2010 Kenyan Constitution, and then describe the research design and methodology of the project. Then, we analyze the data collected to highlight the various ways in which the adoption and implementation of MakueniCare were influenced by human rights, particularly the right to health. We conclude with thoughts on how MakueniCare could be further improved from a human rights perspective.

Health and Human Rights | 2024

From Choice to Justice: Disrupting the Binary Political Logics of Assisted Reproduction.

Reproductive rights and reproductive justice paradigms have long been viewed as incompatible, largely because of their divergent orientations to the notion of choice. According to this oppositional framing, reproductive rights approaches have centered the right of (white, middle-class, heterosexual) women to choose not to have children while reproductive justice organizing has focused on gendered, racialized, and classed obstacles to control over whether and how to have and raise children. Amid increasing examination of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) vis-à-vis human rights principles, I see an opportunity to narrow the perceived gap between the politics of rights and justice. Human rights organizations and scholars are recognizing the stratification of medical infertility rates and ART access, and human rights courts are articulating the right to assisted reproduction as part of a fundamental right to reproductive health. In reframing the opportunity to choose assisted reproduction as a justice issue, I seek to unsettle the traditional bifurcation of these political logics.

Health and Human Rights | 2024

Pushing Back: Civil Society Strategies to Address Punitive Anti-LGBTQI Laws in Uganda, Ghana, and Kenya.

Health and Human Rights | 2024

A Multi-Level Approach to Promoting the Health Rights of Immigrant Children in the United States.

Health and Human Rights | 2024

Roadblocks to Cancer Care in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Health and Human Rights | 2024