figurine with a void shape of a child and family of parents with a child. Surrogacy concept.

Regulating International Commercial Surrogacy

By Hannah Rahim

In January 2024, Pope Francis called for a universal ban on surrogacy as a threat to global peace and human dignity, claiming that the practice is a “grave violation” of the mother and child’s dignity and based on the “exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs.” Surrogacy raises complex ethical and legal issues, particularly in cases of international surrogacy, where people seek surrogacy services from another country. There is currently no regulation of international surrogacy. Creating such regulation is important to allow appropriate access to surrogacy services while mitigating its harmful consequences.

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Stethoscope on Ghana flag.

Dr. Eunice Brookman-Amissah: A Pioneer in Safe Abortion Law Reform

By Joelle Boxer

Late last year, Dr. Eunice Brookman-Amissah won the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” for her pioneering efforts to improve safe abortion access in sub-Saharan Africa.

According to Dr. Brookman-Amissah, of the 36,000 deaths that occur globally due to unsafe abortion, almost 24,000 are in sub-Saharan Africa. “That was a totally unacceptable state of affairs,” she said, “given the fact that nobody, absolutely no woman has to die from a totally treatable and manageable cause.” Her advocacy work is credited with contributing to a 40% reduction in deaths from unsafe abortion in the region since 2000.

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View on Namche Bazar, Khumbu district, Himalayas, Nepal.

Intersectionality, Indigeneity, and Disability Climate Justice in Nepal

By Pratima Gurung, Penelope J.S. Stein, and Michael Ashley Stein

The climate crisis disproportionately impacts marginalized populations experiencing multilayered   and intersecting oppression, such as Indigenous Peoples with disabilities. To achieve climate justice, it is imperative to understand how multiple layers of oppression — arising from forces that include ableism, colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism — interact and cause distinctive forms of multiple and intersectional discrimination. Only by understanding these forces can we develop effective, inclusive climate solutions.

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Photo of Alicia Ely Yamin doing fieldwork courtesy of Marion Brown.

Q&A with PFC Director of Global Health and Rights Project, Alicia Ely Yamin

Alicia Ely Yamin J.D. (1991), M.P.H. (1996), Ph.D. is a Lecturer on Law and the Director of the Global Health and Rights Project at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics (PFC) at Harvard Law School; Adjunct Senior Lecturer on Health Policy and Management at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health; and Senior Adviser on Human Rights and Health Policy at the global health justice organization, Partners In Health.

Frequently labelled a scholar-activist, she combines academic research and scholarship that bridges law, development, and public health with grassroots work and policy advocacy. She has lived in seven countries on four continents, and worked with and for local advocacy organizations, including co-founding a program on health and human rights in the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (Lima, Peru; 1999).

In the interview below, she shares more about her career and life.

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scales on blue background.

Conclusion to the Symposium: From Principles to Practice: Human Rights and Public Health Emergencies

By Timothy Fish Hodgson, Roojin Habibi, and Alicia Ely Yamin

In developing the digital symposium, From Principles to Practice: Human Rights and Public Health Emergencies (which ran from October – December 2023), as editors we endeavored to get scholars, human rights advocates, judges, and policy makers to engage critically with the expert Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Public Health Emergencies (the PHE Principles), published by the International Commission of Jurists and the Global Health Law Consortium in May 2023. In doing so, we encouraged contributors to comment on the Principles’ potential usefulness as guidance in addressing real emergency situations, as well as any possible gaps and weaknesses.

While summarizing the entire content of the 13 blogs comprising this symposium in any depth is not possible here, this concluding post will attempt to synthesize some of the major inputs from the contributions. We also provide some of our own observations, as participants in the drafting of the Principles, with the aim of pushing the discussion prompted by the posts forward.

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Clockwise from top left: Daniela Cepeda Cuadrado, Lucía Berro Pizzarossa, Natalia Pires de Vasconcelos, Thalia Viveros Uehara

Introducing the Global Health and Rights Project’s New Affiliated Researchers

(Clockwise from top left: Daniela Cepeda Cuadrado, Lucía Berro Pizzarossa, Natalia Pires de Vasconcelos, Thalia Viveros Uehara)

The Petrie-Flom Center is excited to welcome four new affiliated researchers to the Global Health and Rights Project (GHRP).

Through regular contributions to Bill of Health, as well as workshops and other projects, GHRP affiliated researchers will bring their expertise to bear on both national and global problems, advancing critical socio-legal scholarship both within and beyond Latin America. We look forward to learning from and sharing their insights with a wider audience, and to contributing to enlarging international networks of critical praxis in global health and human rights.

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macro normal female mosquito isolated on green leaf.

Climate Change and Neglected Tropical Diseases: Key Takeaways from the WHO-WIPO-WTO Trilateral Symposium

By Aparajita Lath*

The World Health Organization (WHO), in collaboration with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), hosted the 10th Trilateral Symposium on Human Health and Climate Change in Geneva this November. This article reflects the significant effort made to put climate-sensitive diseases, many of which are neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), at the forefront of these talks.

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see saw with earth as fulcrum and a pile of vaccines weighing down one side with nothing on the other side.

The Case for Procurement Transparency

By Tara Davis and Nicola Soekoe

In January 2021, the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) observed that the world was on the brink of a “catastrophic moral failure” if wealthier nations did not ensure the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Global health activists and civil society organizations who worked transnationally to curtail what came to be referred to as “vaccine apartheid” faced a pharmaceutical industry that globally relied on secrecy, capital-friendly trade laws, and brute economic force to shirk considerations of human rights. In many ways, pharmaceutical companies and the states that protected them, including by failing to achieve consensus at the World Trade Organization (WTO) for a waiver of intellectual property rights with respect to vaccines, seemed impenetrable.

Unsurprisingly, given the extreme position of power from which pharmaceutical companies were negotiating contracts, there were widespread reports and allegations of inequitable contractual terms and a culture of bullying in the development of contracts. This was an issue of global concern for a long period during the pandemic. In South Africa, the Health Justice Initiative (HJI), a local advocacy organization, joined the global calls for greater procurement transparency.

However, when the South African Department of Health refused to disclose even the names of the entities with which it had entered into vaccine-related agreements, the HJI was forced to turn to the courts for relief.

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Close-up Of An Open Law Book On Wooden Desk In Courtroom.

Can Rights Make Any Difference for Access to Health? Insights from a Scoping Review on Constitutional Rights for the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All

By Luciano Bottini Filho, Camila Gianella Malca, and Alicia Ely Yamin

The intersection of health financing and the right to health is a common concern in public health advocacy. However, it is challenging to isolate the mechanisms that connect individuals’ rights with increased public investment. As scholars, we grapple with the question of what happens once the right to health is constitutionalized and whether it has a transformative effect on the economy, government funding, and the material reality people face in struggling health care systems. In this article, we shed light on this significant gap between the adoption of the right to health through constitutions or legislation and actual changes in the economy and government funding for health. Our study was commissioned by the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All, which received the mandate of formulating a new global economic model to achieve health for all.

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