Category: Human Rights

Reinventing South African Trade Unions to Protect the Health of Informal Workers in the Face of Climate Change

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

by Cecile de Villiers

South Africa is considered the most unequal country in the world, with stagnant economic growth and staggeringly high unemployment. More than five million or 31.2% of workers in South Africa find economic opportunities in the “informal economy,” often because there are fewer barriers (training, skills, regulation) to entering the sector. 

Informal workers comprise a diverse group who may work in the formal or informal economy. Precarity of employment is common among these workers, who include, for example, casual workers as well as owners of microbusinesses (such as street vending or Spaza shops). However, workers in temporary, part-time or on-call work arrangements may also fall within this category, depending on the circumstances.

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

Regulating International Commercial Surrogacy

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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

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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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. Group of pregnant women and women with children. Vector illustration

#MaternalHealthAwarenessDay: Three Policies to Push

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By Joelle Boxer

Today is Maternal Health Awareness Day, focused on the theme “Access in Crisis.”

“Crisis” is the right word, yet still an understatement. In the U.S., for every 100,000 live births in 2021, nearly 33 pregnant people lost their lives. In Norway, that number was 2. Black and Native American women in the U.S. are particularly at risk, with death rates 2-3 times higher than those of white women, due to structural racism.

What can the law do to prevent these deaths? Medicaid pays for more than 40% of births in the U.S., covering 64% of Black mothers and 66% of Native American mothers. Examining efforts at the federal and state level, I highlight three options, leveraging Medicaid as a policy lever.

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scales on blue background.

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

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

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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Rows of gold post office boxes with one open mail box.

Plan to See ‘Plan C’ This Year

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By Joelle Boxer

Tracy Droz Tragos’ new documentary, “Plan C,” follows the work of a grassroots organization dedicated to improving access to the abortion pill by mail in the U.S., while navigating an increasingly restrictive legal landscape.

There is no better time to hear the perspectives of these patients, providers, and activists. Just last month, the U.S. Supreme Court took on a case to determine the legal status of the pill, also called mifepristone. With a decision expected in June 2024, Tragos’ film shows us what’s at stake.

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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

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment
(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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Colorful lottery balls in a rotating bingo machine.

Applying Luck Egalitarianism to Health Resource Allocation

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By Hannah Rahim

Luck egalitarianism is a theory of political philosophy that provides that inequalities resulting from an individual’s informed choices are just and need not be reduced, whereas inequalities resulting from circumstances over which an individual has no control are unjust and should be reduced. The application of luck egalitarianism to health inequalities has some value when allocating health care resources, but it often conceptualizes health too narrowly and risks exacerbating existing unjust disparities. If luck egalitarianism is to be applied in developing health care policy, it must only be used in clearly defined circumstances and with a holistic approach.

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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

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

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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