United Nations

This blog was written by Benjamin Mason Meier, Hanna Huffstetler, Claudia Quiros & Rebekah Thomas

“Where after all do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: The neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”

Eleanor Roosevelt, remarks delivered at the United Nations in New York on March 27, 1958.

Committing to equal rights

本周在将近七十年前,nations of the world convened the United Nations (UN) General Assembly to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Developed in the wake of World War II, the UDHR proclaimed the powerful idea that all individuals, by virtue of their humanity, are born free and equal in dignity and rights. This groundbreaking commitment to social progress—to protect universal values of equality, justice, and human dignity—would come to be celebrated each year on International Human Rights Day. Celebrated on the December 10^thanniversary of the adoption of the UDHR,Human Rights Day是将人权置于全球良心最前沿的持久努力的一部分。这一纪念活动为实现与健康相关的人权的努力所取得的进步不仅提供了一个机会，而且还反映了未来的健康和人权挑战。

国家宣布UDHR为“所有民族和所有国家的共同成就标准”，在新年联合国的主持下工作，列举了全世界所有个人的普遍和不可剥夺的权利。[1]In defining an interrelated set of human rights for the public’s health, states declared in the UDHR that:

Everyone has the right toa standard of living adequate for the health以及自己和家人的幸福，包括食物，衣服，住房和medical careand necessary social services….[2]

There was widespread international agreement that this “standard of living” included both the fulfillment of medical care and the realization of underlying determinants of health, including within this right public health obligations for food safety and nutrition, sanitary housing, disease prevention, and comprehensive social security.

While not a legally binding document, the UDHR has retained widespread normative supremacy in health and human rights discourses, and “nations (states) have endowed it with great legitimacy through their actions, including its legal and political invocation at the national and international levels.”[3]Where the UDHR has inspired the creation of nearly 100 human rights instruments since World War II, establishing legal frameworks for rights-based justice in health, states have moved in increasing numbers to develop these universal norms under international law and implement human rights through public policy.

首先开发了人权日，以建立对UDHR和开创性的1996年盟约的支持，这些盟约将使其义务 - 国际公民权利和政治权利以及经济，社会和文化权利的国际盟约。为了提高全球支持人权的认识，联合国为UDHR建立了这些周年庆典，以（1）认识到过去的联合国在促进人权方面的成就，（2）宣传UDHR的特定实质性权利，以及（3）刺激公共政策关于人权进步的讨论。在这些联合国庆祝活动中试图在联合国专业机构的各个职权范围内促进人权的地方，这种庆祝活动将与通过世界卫生组织（WHO）提高与健康相关的人权义务的发展特别相关。

Through its engagement with human rights as a basis for the advancement of global health, WHO has long grappled with its responsibilities for the development and implementation of health-related human rights.[4]Human Rights Day has historically offered an opportunity for WHO to critically examine its rights-based efforts, and in recent years, WHO has sought expand this engagement to provoke thoughtful reflection throughout the world about how human rights can contribute to the realization of health.

Human Rights Day and the World Health Organization

Echoing this year’s call for Human Rights Day, with the UN launching a movement to “stand up for someone’s rights today” through its#StandUp4HumanRights Campaign, WHO is addressing health inequalities rooted in discrimination—on the basis of age, sex, race, health status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identify, migration status, and other factors. WHO this year signed the Joint United Nations statement on ending discrimination in health care settings, committing UN entities to: support states to align national and international laws and standards; to empower health workers and users of health services to fulfill their roles and responsibilities and claim their rights; and foster accountability by declaring discrimination in health care settings unacceptable. WHO’s new Director-General has already signaled his determination to shift toward greater accountability for rights-based results and has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to collaborate in addressing human rights “to health and through health.”[5]The current drafting of WHO’s next Global Programme of Work reflects this commitment to human rights. Developed through an expansive, bottom-up consultative process that focuses explicitly on reaching health equity and advancing gender equality and human rights, the Global Programme of Work builds on the groundbreaking Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which, like human rights, acknowledge that health is indivisible from its social determinants. Commemorating this Human Rights Day, WHO seeks to ensure that health and human rights become the defining success of the SDG era.

The celebration of International Human Rights Day provides a reminder that human rights are universal and inalienable, and yet are all too often flouted in meeting health goals, raising an imperative to take stock of how far global actors have come in delivering on the right to health, health-related human rights, and rights-based approaches to health. Increasingly explicit statements of support for human rights in health augur well for the future of human rights in global health. Human Rights Day offers the opportunity to measure these commitments against the standards laid out under the UDHR and the larger human rights framework, providing an opportunity to raise our voices in support for those ambitions that have yet to be realized.

[1]Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Preamble (1948).

[2]Ibid., article 25(1).

[3]Jonathan M. Mann et al.,Health and Human Rights,in健康与人权7，9（Jonathan M. Mann等，编辑，1999年）。

[4]Rebekah Thomas and Veronica Magar,Mainstreaming Human Rights Across WHO,inHuman Rights in Global Health: Rights-Based Governance for a Globalizing World (Benjamin Mason Meier and Lawrence O. Gostin, eds. forthcoming).

[5]WHO, Agreement signed between WHO and UN Human Rights agency to advance work on health and human rights, 21 November 2017, at https://www.who.int/life-course/news/who-unhcr-agreement-on-health-and-human-rights/en/.

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