Harold KOH
State Department Legal Adviser
United States of America

Monday, 9 November 2009, 6.30 PM

Auditoire Jacques Freymond (The Graduate Institute)
Rue de Lausanne 132, Geneva.

The lecture will be given in English.

Enjoyment of health is a fundamental human right, often taken for granted. Yet, for huge numbers of people around the world, this right is not a reality. Indeed, some areas lack the political will and infrastructure to guarantee the right to health. These and other issues form the substance of Realizing the Right to Health, a recently published book edited by Andrew Clapham and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson.

To mark this publication, on 22 June, the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights organised an international symposium to address the topic “Realizing the Right to Health: Whose Role is it Anyway?” Deputy UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Kyung-wha Kang, delivered the keynote address, and a number of experts participated as panellists, including Len Rubenstein, Professor Mary Crewe, Professor Eibe Riedel, Professor Lynn Freedman, Iain Byrne, Gian Luca Burci, Carole Presern, and Tido von Schoen-Angerer. The Deputy High Commissioner welcomed the book as “an initiative of the highest standards, which highlights the numerous challenges to the realisation, universality and protection of the right to health, and offers rigorous analysis and arguments to counter scepticism about health as a human right.”

Panellists addressed the importance of strengthening national health systems, and the role of governments in building strong healthcare systems. They examined case studies of how they sometimes fail to do this, for example in Zimbabwe where the government has overseen the collapse of the health system and the emergence of a large-scale health crisis. They also discussed the growing importance of new global health initiatives and public-private partnerships such as the Global Fund and GAVI. Panellists addressed the role of healthcare practitioners, as well as those of civil society, pharmaceutical companies, and global development donors. A key issue was how the World Health Organisation and other UN bodies should prioritise a rights-based approach to health and how to ensure more effective global governance in this area. The importance of taking a gender-based focus was highlighted, and the case study of maternal mortality was examined, with the Deputy High Commissioner noting that “If we are serious about reducing maternal mortality and, more broadly, about tackling the great gap in women's health, a human-rights based approach must be adopted by all of us, whatever roles we play.”

Realizing the Right to Health, (Rüffer & Rub: Zurich), Volume III in the Swiss Human Rights Book series, an initiative of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (www.swisshumanrightsbook.com), contains 40 chapters by 60 leading healthcare practitioners, human rights advocates, health officials, and other authorities in the international right to health movement.

It describes how realising the right to health requires a strong focus on strengthening healthcare systems and transforming health systems for women. Taking a human rights approach to health means understanding the underlying social determinants of this right, as well as how to ensure the right to health is realised in times of emergency and armed conflict, and for all groups in society, including migrants and refugees, LGBTI persons, prisoners and detainees, and others. In Realizing the Right to Health leading international experts in human rights and health address issues such as access to essential medicine, HIV/AIDS, trade and health, SARS and malaria, and human rights approaches to other key health challenges. They address the role of governments, non-state actors and healthcare practitioners, the responses of multilateral institutions, and highlight some of the most promising strategies for realising the right to health.

A video of this event will be posted later on the website of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.

To read chapters from the book.

To order a copy of the book.

The programme for the international symposium and book launch.

View the 3 part video webcast of the symposium:

Philippe Sands
Professor at the University College London (UCL)

Author of the book:
Torture Team – Deception, Cruelty and the Compromise of Law

Wednesday 18 February 2009, 18h30

Uni-Mail - salle R390

40, Bd du Pont-d'Arve