scholarly journals (P1-109) Violence, Health and Human Rights: Analysis of the Right to Health for Conflict Displaced Persons Living In IDP Camps in Northern Sri Lanka

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (S1) ◽  
pp. s134-s134
Author(s):  
K. Wickramage ◽  
A. Zwi

This presentation explores the nexus between collective violence (in the form of violent civil conflict) and health and human rights in Sri Lanka, focusing specifically on persons displaced during the most recent conflict in Northern Sri Lanka beginning in November 2008. After exploring the normative framework in relation to the right to health, the local legal framework governing internal displacement, and the related component on healthcare access, service provision, and standards will be described. By examining health cluster reports, health surveys, and case-studies, this presentation describes how the health sector responded in providing healthcare services to those war displaced living in internally displaced people (IDP) camps in Vavuniya District. The “rights based approach to health” is examined in relation to the health sector response, and key issues and challenges in meeting health protection needs are highlighted. A conceptual framework on the right to health for IDPs in Northern Sri Lanka is presented. This presentation also explores how some health interventions in the post-conflict Sri Lankan context may have acted as a bridge for peace building and reconciliation.

Author(s):  
Joseph J. Amon ◽  
Eric Friedman

This chapter presents an overview of health and human rights advocacy and describes a broad framework and the diverse strategies used by human rights advocates to advance their goals. Based upon documenting abuses, raising awareness, building coalitions, and engaging communities, human rights advocacy seeks to ensure that government laws, policies, and practices respect, protect, and fulfill the right to health of all. These rights arguments and advocacy strategies, first developed in response to the HIV epidemic, have become the basis for broader right to health campaigns. Health-related human rights advocacy, beyond specific strategies, seeks to elevate the voices of people affected by human rights violations, analyze structural barriers, and identify obligations and responsibilities. Focusing on the strategies and tools that human rights advocates use in documenting rights abuses, raising awareness, and seeking change, it is necessary to examine new advocacy partnerships and approaches for evaluating advocacy efforts.


Author(s):  
Flood Colleen M ◽  
Thomas Bryan

This chapter examines both the power and limitations of litigation as a means of facilitating accountability for the advancement of public health. While almost half of the world’s constitutions now contain a justiciable right to health, the impact of litigation has been mixed. Judicial accountability has, in some cases, advanced state obligations to realize the highest attainable standard of health, but in other cases, litigation has threatened the solidarity undergirding public health systems. There is significant country-to-country variation in interpreting health-related human rights, as well as differing views of the proper role of courts in interpreting and enforcing these rights. Surveying regional human rights systems and national judicial efforts to address health and human rights, it is necessary to analyze how courts have approached—and how they should approach—litigation of the right to health and health-related human rights to improve health for all.


Author(s):  
Amon Joseph J ◽  
Friedman Eric

This chapter presents an overview of health and human rights advocacy and describes a broad framework and the diverse strategies used by human rights advocates to advance their goals. Based upon documenting abuses, raising awareness, building coalitions, and engaging communities, human rights advocacy seeks to ensure that government laws, policies, and practices respect, protect, and fulfill the right to health of all. These rights arguments and advocacy strategies, first developed in response to the HIV epidemic, have become the basis for broader right to health campaigns. Health-related human rights advocacy, beyond specific strategies, seeks to elevate the voices of people affected by human rights violations, analyze structural barriers, and identify obligations and responsibilities. Focusing on the strategies and tools that human rights advocates use in documenting rights abuses, raising awareness, and seeking change, it is necessary to examine new advocacy partnerships and approaches for evaluating advocacy efforts.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 93-120
Author(s):  
Pavithra Siriwardhane ◽  
Prem W.S. Yapa

This paper examines how three decades of civil conflict in Sri Lanka has impacted the perceptions of the accounting practitioners with regard to human rights (both during and post-conflict). Using the legitimacy lens in social accounting and the role of the state-supported accountancy body - Institute of Chartered Accountants Sr Lanka (CASL) human rights case is investigated. Specifically, the study’s scope is on rights and the degree of legitimacy formation for which accounting associations are accountable for human rights disclosure in a post-conflict environment in an emerging economy. The study interprets documentary evidence and a survey data that was administered among the members of the CASL. The findings reveal that the civil conflict had not hindered the accountants being in parallel with the legitimacy of social accounting notions adopted by the Western world in the disclosure of human rights. At the individual response level, they perceive that the accounting discipline as agents to promote human rights disclosure in business entities. Despite the fact, that this study has a low response rate, what is generalisable is an understanding of the processes and mechanisms which relate to the way the accountants perceived human rights by themselves. The practical implication indicates that urgent measures need to be undertaken to mainstream the legitimate human rights obligations of business entities since there is no one-size-fits-all strategy in a post-conflict environment. The social implication is that awareness of human rights issues, especially among the next generation of accountants is vital since this transformation would enable them not only to be technically competent but also to be ethical in a post-conflict environment. The study contributes to the literature on perceptions of human rights in a post-conflict environment from a social accounting perspective in an emerging economy.


2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 365-386 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mette Hartlev

The right to health is recognised in human rights law and is also part of the catalogue of patients’ rights. It imposes a duty on governments to put in place a system of health protection making it possible for individuals to enjoy the highest attainable standard of health. However, disease patterns are constantly changing, and more and more attention is being paid to so-called lifestyle diseases. Individuals may expose themselves to health threats due to personal choices like eating and smoking habits, and this raises the issue of the individual’s obligation with regard to ill health. Hence, is there not only a right to health but also a duty to be healthy? Using obesity as an example, and based on a cross-disciplinary research project, the article analyses selected European and national public health policy papers to see how individual rights and duties are framed and to analyse the use of stigmatisation as a public-health strategy from a health and human rights perspective.


Author(s):  
Alicia Ely Yamin ◽  
Andrés Constantin

This chapter explores the evolution and struggles of the “health and human rights movement,” focusing particularly on relevant developments in health and international law that enabled greater attention to the right to health. It discusses the evolution of human rights-based approaches (HRBAs) to health, which extended these legal concepts into the domains of development and social policy. Over twenty years after it began to take shape, the “health and human rights” field is not one discipline but many. This cluster of related work now faces the new challenges of a precariously constructed international normative scaffolding, the rising complexities of moving from constitutional norms to effective enjoyment in practice at the national level, and the potential danger of HRBAs being reduced to technocratic formulas and emptied of their subversive potential.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17
Author(s):  
Juan Smart ◽  
Alejandra Letelier

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to do a systematic assessment and testing of identified human rights norms alongside social determinant approaches in relation to identified health issues of concern in four Latin American countries (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) to show how social determinants and human rights frameworks improve population health. Design/methodology/approach To do so, in the first part the authors analyze the inequalities both between and within each of the selected countries in terms of health status and health determinants of the population. Then, in the second section, the authors analyze the level of recognition, institutionalisation and accountability of the right to health in each country. Findings From the data used in this paper it is possible to conclude that the four analysed countries have improved their results in terms of health status, health care and health behaviours. This improvement coincides with the recognition, institutionalisation and creation of accountability mechanisms of human rights principles and standards in terms of health and that a human rights approach to health and its relation with other social determinants have extended universal health coverage and health systems in the four analysed countries. Originality/value Despite of the importance of the relation between human rights and social determinants of health, there are few human right scholars working on the issues of social determinants of health and human rights. Most of the literature of health and human rights has been focussed specific relations between specific rights and the right to health, but less human right scholar working on social determinants of health. On the other hand, just a few epidemiologists and people working on social medicine have actually started to use a universal human rights frame and discourse. In fact, according to Vnkatapuram, Bell and Marmot: “while health and human rights advocates have from the start taken a global perspective, social medicine and social epidemiology have been slower to catch up”.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-127
Author(s):  
Khairil Azmin Mokhtar

Health rights, unlike political and economic rights, until recently has not received sufficient attention that it truly deserves despite being equally important as other aspects of human rights.  It is timely that the right to health be given serious attention and more coverage by the media, legal fraternity and the authorities as well as by the public at large. Unfortunately, the Malaysian Constitution does not have any express provision which recognizes health right and no laws in the country so far acknowledged such right. Hence, this research is done to supplement the gap.  This is a legal research which applies qualitative approach focusing on rights relating to private and public health. It is a doctrinal and jurisprudential study and examines international and national laws, especially the Malaysian Constitution. Health is essential for a good life of any human being. Without it a person cannot have a quality life. Although it cannot be expected that government must guarantee everybody will be healthy it cannot be denied that among the functions and obligations of the governments are to provide healthcare services to the community and ensure that facilities and avenues for medical treatments are available to the people. This right has been firmly established in international human rights laws. Its realization has been the subject and objective of various international conventions and policies. It is believed that right to health is ingrained in the constitution of the country and should be recognized by the courts and the governments.


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