Author: sfparr

Pandemic Discourses – A Global Contagion Demands Global Perspectives

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By Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, , and

As the inaugural issue of goes online, 4.7 million cases of COVID-19 and nearly 320,000 deaths have been recorded by the World Health Organization. The waves of cases and deaths have been closely followed by mounting economic losses, leaving governments, communities, and individuals scrambling to find appropriate responses. Yet, even in this uniquely global moment, popular discourse around the pandemic has remained trapped within familiar terms.

Media coverage has to a large extent focused on experiences of the United States and Europe. The frameworks developed to respond to the pandemic have also been US/Euro-centric, frequently inward-looking and isolationist, paying scant attention to expertise, knowledge, and capacities elsewhere. The experiences of other parts of the world, even when taken into account, often serve to cement prior prejudices. In response to this lopsided discussion, Pandemic Discourses aims to foster a more expansive dialogue that encompasses voices from the global South, including China, India, and beyond.Read More »

Trade for Human Rights as a Minimum Core Obligation

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In on the Minimum Core Doctrine (MCD) John Tasioulas states:

鈥渢he essence of the concept will be taken to be the sub-set of obligations associated with socio-economic rights that must be immediately complied with in full (obligations of immediate effect)鈥� (p. 3).

He contrasts these against those obligations that require significant resources and are therefore subject to 鈥榩rogressive realization鈥�. Thus, the defining characteristic of MCD is that it differentiates obligations between those of immediate effect and those of progressive realization. And the focus is on the nature of the obligations (what the state must do when) rather than the nature of substantive rights (the condition of people鈥檚 lives).

However, the discussion about what constitutes minimum core obligations in substance focuses on the nature of rights enjoyment and a package of minimum goods and services that would be required rather than the nature of obligations. This starts with General Comment 3 that refers to 鈥榓 minimum core obligation to ensure the satisfaction of, at the very least, minimum essential levels of each of the rights鈥�, and to the provision of 鈥榚ssential primary health care鈥� (ICESCR quoted in Tasioulas p. 5). Further, human rights-based practice begins to specify specific types of diseases to be treated and goods and services that would be included in the minimum, as under the 鈥榮elective primary health care model鈥� adopted by UNICEF (Tasioulas p. 5).Read More »

UN report on access to medicines is an opportunity for sustainable solutions

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September鈥檚 UN special session on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) was a vivid reminder of the shared responsibility of governments to promote research and development (R&D) combat global health threats. The complexity of the AMR threat made clear that a combination of market forces, policy incentives, and regulation, as well as norms and standards was needed to ensure innovation that would deliver accessible and affordable treatments.

The report of the offers an important opportunity for national governments, UN organizations, philanthropies, civil society, and pharmaceutical manufacturers to move forwards and address this challenge. AMR is just the latest global health priority that cannot be resolved with the current incentive system for investing in medical R&D. AMR threatens to render a whole range of treatments ineffective and reverse 20th聽century advances in medicine. Numerous other health priorities are neglected because they do not present a business potential for investment, and millions of people lack access to medicines and treatments that are priced out of reach.

In a world of unprecedented medical advances, these unmet needs present a moral dilemma, and one of the most critical challenges for humanity. The Panel, on which I had the privilege to serve, makes a number of concrete proposals to promote needs-driven R&D financing and to expand access to medicines for people in need. As a whole, the report makes short-term and long-term recommendations towards introducing more systematic and sustainable approaches to meeting unmet needs in innovation and access.

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Human rights are not losing traction in the global South

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An indigenous Filipino woman sells bracelets. Source: Flickr/Andy Enero

and have set off an important debate about whether human rights have run out of steam as a force for human progress. Other commentators such as have argued that human rights no longer have the power to mobilize international condemnation and moral pressure against totalitarian regimes. Posner argues, for example, that the rapid expansion in the ratification of human rights treaties since the 1990s has had no impact on the respect for human rights. Further, since the end of colonization, human rights movements such as the right to self-determination, the civil rights act in the US, and overall equality in the US have run out of steam.

On closer reading and reflection, these arguments tell a very partial story about human rights. 聽They are limited to human rights as civil and political rights to end brutal authoritarian rule, as law in international treaties to be enforced by the UN human rights system, and as a mission of international institutions embodied in international treaties and bodies, both inter-governmental and non-governmental. 聽Indeed, these opinions reflect a view of human rights as a civilizing mission of the Western world by the use of law and political power鈥攁 vision of the dominant human rights scholars and organizations.

Yet there are other ways of understanding the process of human rights progress. As Michael Ignatieff forcefully argued at a recent conference at Kings College, human rights is not about international law but about politics: 鈥渕oral politics expressed as or clothed in law鈥�. And the politics is not just about foreign policy goals of powerful states.Read More »