scholarly journals Training medical students in human rights: a fifteen-year experience in Geneva

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. e151-e158
Author(s):  
Philippe Chastonay ◽  
Véronique Zesiger ◽  
Jackeline Ferreira ◽  
Emmanuel Kabengele Mpinga

Background: Training health professionals in the field of human rights has long been advocated by the United Nations. Over the past decade some medical schools have introduced health and human rights courses, yet by far not all. This paper describes the objectives and the content of the Health and Human Rights program developed at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva. Methods: The health and human rights program was developed through the identification of the course objectives, contents, and educational modalities using consensus techniques, and through a step by step implementation procedure integrating multiple evaluation processes. Results: Defined objectives included the familiarization with the concepts, instruments and mechanisms of human rights, the links between health and human rights, and the role of health professionals in promoting human rights. The content ultimately adopted focused on the typology of human rights, their mechanisms of protection, their instruments, as well as social inequalities and vulnerable groups of the population. The implementation proceeded through a step by step approach. Evaluation showed high satisfaction of students, good achievement of learning objectives, and some academic and community impact. Conclusions: High interest of students for a human rights course is encouraging. Furthermore, the community projects initiated and implemented by students may contribute to the social responsibility of the academic institution.

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 514-543
Author(s):  
HIBA KAREEM ◽  

The issue of empowering women has been and still is the preoccupation of various humanitarian organizations, especially human rights organizations. Regarding the issue of human rights in Iraq, it is extremely difficult, because of the exceptional circumstances ordered by Iraq, which made it an arena for human rights violations. Vulnerable groups, they are more affected by the surrounding circumstances, such as violence, displacement, terrorism, displacement, widowhood, and others ... especially with regard to measures to empower women, because what women suffer in our society is a heap of discriminatory traditional culture against them and their lack of awareness of themselves and Their legitimate rights, in addition to weak government policies, and the lack of resources and opportunities, and herein lies the problem. The importance of the research stems from the importance of the role of women in society and the social, economic, health and political dimensions that this role represents, and the extent of its impact on the development process in Iraq. As for its objectives, it is to stand on the role of human rights organizations in empowering women in all social, economic, political and health fields, from which we have deduced most of them marginalization and discrimination on the basis of gender, and then we proposed some enabling measures, hoping through them to integrate women in all levels of development . Key words : role, organizations, human rights, empowerment, women .


Author(s):  
Leslie London ◽  
Marion Heap ◽  
Laurel Baldwin-Ragaven

South Africa’s struggle against apartheid discrimination, including struggles in the health sector, laid the basis for a vibrant engagement of staff and students in human rights research, teaching and outreach in the Health Sciences Faculty at the University of Cape Town (UCT). This article provides a brief overview of this background context, then shows how this engagement has continued with new challenges emerging in the post-apartheid democratic period. Teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels has been complemented by a programme of ‘Training the Trainers’ in health and human rights. The programme targets teachers of health professionals at institutions in South and Southern Africa, resulting in national adoption of human rights competencies as an essential component of health professionals’ skills base. Research has also extended lessons learnt from the apartheid period into work with vulnerable groups, such as rural farm workers and the deaf, and seeks to build the capacity of marginal populations to change the conditions of their vulnerability in order to realize their rights. Partnerships with civil society organisations have been a strong thread, creating new knowledge and new ways of joint work towards realizing the right to health, including advocacy engagement in civil society movements and regional networks. Further, a focus on health professionals’ practice, in terms of dealing with potential dual loyalty conflicts and their role as gatekeepers in the health services on matters of patients’ rights, has shaped the research agenda. This article illustrates how knowledge production for the public good extends beyond notions of enhancing economic productivity for national development and provides a base for transdisciplinary and transinstitutional engagement. Additionally, non-traditional forms of knowledge networking and transfer have also been explored, including engagement with policy-makers and health managers. Finally, it is shown how the portfolio of social responsiveness activities in the health and human rights envelope has offered significant and novel mutual benefits to the University and the community.


Postcolonial studies, postmodern studies, even posthuman studies emerge, and intellectuals demand that social sciences be remade to address fundamentals of the human condition, from human rights to global environmental crises. Since these fields owe so much to American state sponsorship, is it easier to reimagine the human and the modern than to properly measure the pervasive American influence? Reconsidering American Power offers trenchant studies by renowned scholars who reassess the role of the social sciences in the construction and upkeep of the Pax Americana and the influence of Pax Americana on the social sciences. With the thematic image for this enterprise as the ‘fiery hunt’ for Ahab’s whale, the contributors pursue realities behind the theories, and reconsider the real origins and motives of their fields with an eye on what will deter or repurpose the ‘fiery hunts’ to come, by offering a critical insider’s view.


2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-134
Author(s):  
Dilek Kurban

In his well-researched biography, Mike Chinoy chronicles Kevin Boyle's life and career as a scholar, activist and lawyer, bringing to light his under-appreciated role in the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland and the efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict, as well as his contributions to human rights movements in the United Kingdom, Europe and the world. Are You With Me? is an important contribution to the literature on the actors who have shaped the norms, institutions and operations of human rights. In its efforts to shed light on one man, the book offers a fresh alternative to state-centric accounts of the origins of human rights. The book offers a portrait of a social movement actor turned legal scholar who used the law to contest the social inequalities against the minority community to which he belonged and to push for a solution to the underlying political conflict, as well as revelations of the complex power dynamics between human rights lawyers and the social movements they represent. In these respects Are You With Me? also provides valuable insights for socio-legal scholars, especially those focusing on legal mobilisation. At the same time the book could have provided a fuller and more complex biographical account had Chinoy been geographically and linguistically comprehensive in selecting his interviewees. The exclusion of Kurdish lawyers and human rights advocates is noticeable, particularly in light of the inclusion of Boyle's local partners in other contexts, such as South Africa.


2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (53) ◽  
pp. 25-40
Author(s):  
Fabio Perocco

Abstract During the last two decades of rising anti-migrant racism in Europe, Islamophobia has proven to be the highest, most acute, and widely spread form of racism. The article shows how anti-migrant Islamophobia is a structural phenomenon in European societies and how its internal structure has specific social roots and mechanisms of functioning. Such an articulate and interdependent set of key themes, policies, practices, discourses, and social actors it is intended to inferiorise and marginalise Muslim immigrants while legitimising and reproducing social inequalities affecting the majority of them. The article examines the social origins of anti-migrant Islamophobia and the modes and mechanisms through which it naturalises inequalities; it focuses on the main social actors involved in its production, specifically on the role of some collective subjects as anti-Muslim organizations and movements, far-right parties, best-selling authors, and the mass-media.


2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-79
Author(s):  
Fabiola De Sampaio Rodrigues Grazinoli Garrido ◽  
Rodrigo Grazinoli Garrido

Trabalhos desenvolvidos em equipes multidisciplinares devem ser rotina para os futuros egressos do curso de direito. O objetivo desse artigo é discutir algumas estratégias e planos de trabalho utilizados no Programa de Educação Tutorial Conexões de Saberes que envolve estudantes do curso de direito da Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro no campus de Três Rios, interior do Rio de Janeiro. Nessa perspectiva, o engajamento dos estudantes em projetos do tem contribuído como um campo experimental para o desenvolvimento das habilidades necessárias aos bacharéis em direito, bem como para a percepção do papel social do futuro profissional. Desde 2014, a equipe desenvolve projetos que discutem a função da universidade junto à comunidade, abordando sobretudo questões relacionadas a grupos vulneráveis e a aspectos agroambientais.Palavras-chave: aprendizagem significativa; formação integradora; projetos na graduação. Abstract Work performed in multidisciplinary teams should be routine for future graduates of the law courses. The aim of this paper is to discuss some strategies and work plans used in the Connections of Knowledge Tutorial Program that involves law students of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro on the campus of Três Rios, in the interior of Rio de Janeiro. In this perspective, students' engagement in projects has contributed as an experimental field for the development of the skills required by law graduates, as well as for the perception of the social role of the professional future. Since 2014, the team has developed projects that discuss the role of the university in the community, addressing issues related to vulnerable groups and agro-environmental aspects.


2020 ◽  
pp. 124-149
Author(s):  
Alessia Barroso Lima Brito Campos Chevitarese ◽  
Ana Borges Coêlho Santos ◽  
Camila Nascimento de Souza

RESUMOO artigo tem por objetivo analisar a efetividade da jurisdição constitucional como mecanismo de emancipação social de determinados grupos a partir de decisões da Corte Constitucional colombiana. Nesse sentido, busca-se compreender a tutela dos direitos sociais, conforme o disposto na Constituição Colombiana de 1991, e os desafios de implementação dos direitos previstos, bem como o contexto de desenvolvimento de um protagonismo mais acentuado da Corte Constitucional colombiana. O estudo investiga se as progressistas decisões da citada Corte são capazes de modificar positivamente a situação social de grupos socialmente vulneráveis, com a finalidade de ponderar, nesse contexto, o papel da jurisdição constitucional na efetividade dos direitos sociais dos jurisdicionados.PALAVRAS-CHAVECorte Constitucional da Colômbia. Emancipação social. Efetividade dos direitos sociais. ABSTRACTThe article aims to analyze the effectiveness of judicial review as a mechanism of social emancipation of certain groups based on decisions of the Colombian Constitutional Court on social rights. In this sense, we seek to understand the protection of social rights, in accordance with the Colombian Constitution of 1991 and the challenges of implementing the rights envisaged, as well as the context of developing a more prominent role of the Colombian Constitutional Court. The study investigates whether if the progressive decisions of the aforementioned Court are capable of positively changing the social situation of socially vulnerable groups, in order to consider, in this context, the role of constitutional jurisdiction in the effectiveness of the social rights.KEYWORDSColombian Constitutional Court. Social emancipation. Effectiveness of social rights.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ma. Rhea Gretchen Arevalo Abuso

The 2016 national elections in the Philippines have been regarded as the most revealing and consequential democratic practice to the human rights situation in the country for two reasons. First, the overwhelming election of Rodrigo Duterte to the presidency was because of his campaign promise to rid the country of drugs and criminality within “3 to 6 months” through bloody and violent means. Second, the son and namesake of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, whose authoritarian regime in the 1970’s was responsible for countless human rights violations, narrowly lost his vice-presidential bid by a mere 270,000 votes. These turns of events beg the question: how could Filipinos, who experienced a bloody and violent regime at the hands of a dictator, choose to elect national leaders widely associated with human rights violations? This paper addresses this question through the use of in-depth interviews with Filipino college students in key cities in the Philippines in order to describe the Marcos regime from the perspective of the generation that did not experience the period. The research aimed to understand how memories of past human rights violations are formed and shaped, how these memories are crucial to the improvement of the human rights situation in society, and how to ensure that mistakes of the past are not repeated. The study found that widespread revisionist notions about the Marcos regime can be attributed to the absence of meaningful martial law and human rights education in the country.  However, the study also found that young Filipinos regard the social institution of education as the most trustworthy bearer of information on human rights and violent regimes. This highlights the crucial role of schools and educators in promoting human rights in society.


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.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 477-490 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anatolia Batruch ◽  
Frédérique Autin ◽  
Fabienne Bataillard ◽  
Fabrizio Butera

Selection practices in education, such as tracking, may represent a structural obstacle that contributes to the social class achievement gap. We hypothesized that school’s function of selection leads evaluators to reproduce social inequalities in tracking decisions, even when performance is equal. In two studies, participants (students playing the role of teachers, N = 99, or preservice and in-service teachers, N = 70) decided which school track was suitable for a pupil whose socioeconomic status (SES) was manipulated. Although pupils’ achievement was identical, participants considered a lower track more suitable for lower SES than higher SES pupils, and the higher track more suitable for higher SES than lower SES pupils. A third study ( N = 160) revealed that when the selection function of school was salient, rather than its educational function, the gap in tracking between social classes was larger. The selection function of tracking appears to encourage evaluators to artificially create social class inequalities.


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