Carnegie Council

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Articles

Introduction: Rights and the Struggle for Health 12/02/01
We argue for the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, but poverty and lack of health protection are also indirectly linked to a failure to secure civil and political human rights. Those who must struggle to survive can do little to resist oppression.

The Doctor as Witness 05/06/01
Ten years after he began documenting human rights violations and, ultimately, war crimes by the Serbian authorities, Albanian physician Neshad Asllani had become a full-time human rights advocate and founder of the Kosovo Center for Human Rights.
Author(s): Neshad Asllani

Questioning Health and Human Rights 05/06/01
To curb Multi-Drug Resistant-TB, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) committed to WHO's directive that no patient be treated without 80 percent compliance of the population. Brauman questions this stance "that human beings, people of real flesh and blood, ought to be sacrificed."
Author(s): Rony Brauman

Conflicting Interests 05/06/01
Rubinstein observes that health care practitioners can easily become conspirators in human rights abuses by placing the wishes of the state before the rights of the patient.
Author(s): Leonard S. Rubenstein

Transforming Practice through Activism 05/06/01
In the systematic promotion and defense of a person's right to adequate health care, Chilean activists have a multitude of opportunities both to require health care institutions to carry out their promises and to identify what new commitments can and should be made.
Author(s): Timothy Frasca

Applying Human Rights to the HIV/AIDS Crisis 05/06/01
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), a South African NGO, campaigns for access to treatment for HIV/AIDS patients, but the international community must address patent abuse by pharmaceutical companies in order to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic in all developing countries.
Author(s): Nathan Geffen

Temporary Health Care, Lasting Power 05/06/01
Richard A. Murphy tells how human rights advocacy helped the displaced citizens of Princeville, North Carolina, take on FEMA.
Author(s): Richard A. Murphy

Using Indicators to Guide Advocates 05/06/01
Oil production in the Ecuadorian Amazon made people sick, and there emerged the Frente de Defensa de la Amazonia, a coalition of 300 indigenous and environmental groups, and "colono" communities to generate public pressure against the government's oil policies.
Author(s): Sarah Zaidi

Operationalizing Human Rights 05/06/01
In the face of a diminishing social safety net, a growing number of NGOs in the United States have drawn upon human rights standards in articulating claims to improved access to health care. The Human Rights Project (HRP) is one such project.
Author(s): Ramona Ortega

The New Partnership of Health and Human Rights 05/06/01
The linking of health and human rights (H&HR) describes health status by the degree to which human rights are enjoyed. It demands that human rights norms be applied to policies and programs of health systems and to the conduct of health practitioners.
Author(s): Stephen P. Marks

About Human Rights Dialogue

Human Rights Dialogue promotes a global discussion of human rights ideas and practices by presenting firsthand accounts of human rights issues as they arise within specific real-life contexts. In so doing, it helps to clarify the significant and ongoing evolution that is taking place within the human rights movement to make the human rights framework more relevant and effective in addressing the social, economic, and political challenges of the twenty-first century.

The entire publication is online, or you may purchase individual print copies.

Series One (1993–1998)examines all sides of the Asian values debate—the argument that Asian cultural values imply different human rights standards and priorities from those in the West.

Series Two(2000–2005)addresses the problem of the “human rights box”—the constraints that have enabled the human rights framework to gain currency among elites while limiting its advance among the most vulnerable. Specifically, the essays aim to locate the barriers to greater public legitimacy of human rights and to demonstrate how those barriers can be overcome.