scholarly journals The place of human rights and the common good in global health policy

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 365-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Tasioulas ◽  
Effy Vayena
Author(s):  
Jennifer Prah Ruger

The global health governance (GHG) literature frames health variously as a matter of security and foreign policy, human rights, or global public good. Divergence among these perspectives has forestalled the development of a consensus vision for global health. Global health policy will differ according to the frame applied. Fundamentally, GHG today operates on a rational actor model, encompassing a continuum from the purely self-interest-maximizing position at one extreme to a more nuanced approach that takes others’ interests into account when making one’s own calculations. Even where humanitarian concerns are clearly and admirably at play, however, the problem of motivations remains. Often narrow self-interest is also at work, and actors obfuscate this behind altruistic motives.


The Lancet ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 385 (9978) ◽  
pp. e42-e44 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Tasioulas ◽  
Effy Vayena

2021 ◽  
pp. 89-109
Author(s):  
James Wilson

Public health policies are often accused of being paternalistic, or to show the ‘Nanny State’ in action. This chapter argues that complaints about paternalism in public health policy are, for a variety of reasons, much less convincing than is often thought. First, for conceptual reasons, it is difficult to specify what it would be for a policy to be paternalistic. Second, two of the elements that make paternalism problematic at an individual level—interference with liberty and lack of individual consent—are endemic to public policy contexts in general and so cannot be used to support the claim that paternalism in particular is wrong. The chapter concludes that instead of debating whether a given policy is paternalistic, it would be better to ask whether the infringements of liberty it contains are justifiable, without placing any weight on whether or not those infringements of liberty are paternalistic.


2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 356-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Mason Meier ◽  
Ana S. Ayala

In the development of a rights-based approach to global health governance, international organizations have looked to human rights under international law as a basis for public health. Operationalizing human rights law through global health policy, the World Health Organization (WHO) has faced obstacles in efforts to mainstream human rights across the WHO Secretariat. Without centralized human rights leadership in an increasingly fragmented global health policy landscape, regional health offices have sought to advance human rights in health governance and support states in realizing a rights-based approach to health. Examining the efforts of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), this article explores the evolution of human rights in PAHO policy, assesses the mainstreaming of human rights in the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (Bureau or PASB), and analyzes the future of the rights-based approach through regional health governance.


Author(s):  
Sam Dubal

This book is not about crimes against humanity. Rather, it is an indictment of “humanity,” the concept that lies at the heart of human rights and humanitarian missions. Based on fieldwork in northern Uganda, this book brings readers inside the Lord’s Resistance Army, an insurgent group accused of rape, forced conscription of children, and inhumane acts of violence. The author talks with and learns from former rebels as they find meaning in wartime violence, politics, spirituality, and love—experiences that observers often place outside the boundaries of humanity. Rather than approaching the LRA as a set of possibilities, humanity looks at the LRA as a set of problems, as inhuman enemies needing reform. Humanity hegemonizes what counts as good in ways that are difficult to question or challenge. It relies on specific notions of the good—shaped in ideals of modern violence, technology, modernity, and reason, among others—in ways that do violence to the common good. What emerges from this ethnography is an unorthodox question—what would it mean to be “against humanity”? Against Humanity provocatively asks us how to honor life existing outside normative moralities. It challenges us to shift toward alternative, more radical approaches to humanitarian, political, medical, and other interventions, rooted in anti-humanism.


2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-124
Author(s):  
A. Harel

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taras DOBKO ◽  

This article examines philosophical assumptions of whether and how happiness could become a goal of political action and standard for assessing government’s performance. It is argued that solidarity and care for the common good require the political economy of citizenship balanced with affirmation of the dignity of the human person in the form of basic human rights. The rule of law and fair procedures should be complemented with the concern for character development into citizenship and mature civic commitment. This unfolds both in faith-based and secular attempts to imagine and measure human development in terms beyond GDP index and economic statistics. To succeed these attempts must be based on an adequate anthropology, draw their strength from a sound moral source and inspire mature ethical agency. Catholic social thought conceives of integral human development as a way of envisaging social arrangements that foster flourishing of the whole person and each person. It is based on the vision of the human being as an image of God and draws its energy from the idea of “good society” in which respect for the dignity of the human person and care for the common good of all people are central to political and social life. KEY WORDS: Integral human development, common good, dignity, good society, human rights, social progress


2005 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Elsbernd

[The survey addresses recent publications in five areas: (1) foundational resources and approaches; (2) Catholic social thought; (3) faith and public life; (4) reconciliation and social conflict; and (5) environmental and economic ethics. Recurring issues include: praxis-based approaches, the common good and human rights, religion's role in public life, restorative justice, as well as attention to the marginalized.]


Illuminatio ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-191
Author(s):  
Mustafa Cerić

A crisis is a call for change and creative thinking that initiates a dialectics of thought and action. Also, the challenge for nations as well as individuals in crisis is to figure out which parts of their identities are already functioning well and do not need changing, and which parts are no longer working and do need changing. Indeed, Muslim thought today needs the courage to recognize what must be changed in order to deal with the new circumstances. But, at the same time, Muslim scholars need to draw a line and stress the elements that are so fundamental to the faith and culture of Islam that they refuse to be changed. This state of affairs we call dialectical spiritualism, as opposed to Marxist „dialectical materialism“. It is time for humanity to meet the Zeitgeist, „Spirit of the Age“, which is „the Spirit of Peace“ among religions and nations across the globe. History, past and present, is not void of good examples of accords, charters, declarations and commitments to peaceful coexistence between religions and nations from the Medina Charter (622), the Magna Carta Libertatum (1215), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Nostra Aetate (1965), the Declaration of European Muslims (2005), the Common Word Between Us and You (2007), the Marrakesh Declaration (2016), the Alliance of Virtue for the Common Good (2018), the Declaration of Human Fraternity (2019) to the Mecca Charter (2019). All these initiatives, past and present, promote the idea of „the Spirit of Peace“ of all times, but this current time has the biggest need of all times for the Zeitgeist, „Spirit of the Age“, which is the „Spirit of Peace and Tolerance“. This paper attempts to explain this need from a Muslim perspective with a comparison with other initiatives.


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