Category: Blog

By Jacqueline Bhabha June 8, 2015. Last week I attended a two-day colloquium at the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights as one of a group of about 30 experts invited to discuss a draft General Comment (GC) to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.[i] The topic: adolescence. The diverse group debated a wide range of issues, central among which were how to define…

Continue reading “OHCHR: Adolescents and Their Rights”

By Emelia Allan “I know this not only because the research says so, but because of my own experience as a Ghanaian woman…” May 6, 2015. As a member of the Kassena-Nankani ethnic group in Ghana, I grew up seeing my cousins and other girls suffer the pain of female genital mutilation (FGM) and forced marriage too often and usually against their will. Although they detested these acts, not submitting…

Continue reading “Child Marriage and the Ghanaian Girl”

by Chivith Rottanak “I feel like a duck in a cage, afraid someone will cook me….”* May 6, 205. In 2006 Cambodia adopted its Policy on Alternative Care for Children.[1] The policy is based on the premise that children are best raised in families and in communities, and that institutional care should serve as a temporary stopgap and last resort.[2] Later in 2006, the Ministry of Social Affairs issued a…

Continue reading “Cambodian Children Need Better Alternative Care Options”

by Ashley Collins May 1, 2015. “We are here to celebrate.” With this declaration Harvard FXB Director of Research Jacqueline Bhabha set the tone for the International Roma Day panel held at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies on April 8. This year, which marks the 25th anniversary of International Roma Day, Harvard FXB hosted a panel discussion to both reflect on the challenges facing the Roma in Europe and…

Continue reading “Europe 2020 and Roma Rights”

by Noor Al-Kasadi April 29, 2015. The situation in Yemen is complex. My country has endured many long years of chronic poverty, underdevelopment, unemployment and weak basic services. Yemen has also high rates of maternal, infant and under-five mortality as well as high rates of malnutrition. Complicating matters, Yemen serves as a transit point for migrants from the Horn of Africa seeking entry into Saudi Arabia. The more than one…

Continue reading “An Appeal to Protect the Children of Yemen”

April 21, 2015. Professor Alicia Ely Yamin is representing Harvard FXB on the newly launched Lancet – O’Neill Institute, Georgetown University Commission on Global Health and the Law. This purpose of the commission is to promote the perception of the law “as a major determinant of health and safety [that] can be utilized as a powerful and innovative tool to address pressing global health concerns.” The commission’s launch was accompanied…

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by Ariel Low “…the merging of mapping and human rights presents a tremendous new opportunity to [gather] information about human rights abuses…” April 10, 2015. Digital mapping is uniquely suited to documenting human rights abuses because the human eye is drawn to images. Moreover, human rights abuses are inherently linked to geographical context. Working with Christoph Koettl of Amnesty International, I helped create a new website, Human Rights Mapping, which…

Continue reading “Digital Mapping for Human Rights”

April 6, 2015. Last Friday Harvard FXB was pleased to host the launch of Beholden: Religion, Global Health, and Human Rights, a new book by Susan Holman. The book considers two approaches to achieving health and equity that are often classified as ideologically disparate. On the one hand there is the human-rights based approach, which is rooted in systems of economic development and public health, along with the language of…

Continue reading “Bringing Together Global Health and Religion”

by Georgian Lunca “While endorsing Roma enrollment in school, policymakers have not hesitated to enforce social exclusion by physically separating the Roma…” Today, Roma communities worldwide celebrate the 25th International Roma Day. Although officially adopted in 1990 at the 4th Congress of the International Romani Union, the celebration also echoes the first major gathering of Roma leaders, in London, in April 1971. It was then that the Roma anthem and…

Continue reading “Taking Stock of Roma Inclusion in Romania”

by Krista Oehlke “Child protection is not ‘child protective services,’ but encompasses a wide range of issues…which urgently need addressing.” April 1, 2015. Last Friday, Susan Bissell, UNICEF’s chief of child protection, spoke to a room teeming with students from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, the Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard Law School, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the Fletcher School of Law and…

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by Noor Al-Kasadi “Children without birth certificates are … at increased risk of being trafficked … or forcibly recruited into conflict.” March 23, 2015. Every child has the right to be granted a birth certificate immediately after birth. The birth certificate recognizes that the child exists and safeguards all other rights, especially the right to protection from violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect. Unfortunately, “Yemen has the lowest birth registration rate…

Continue reading “Birth Registration Will Mean Greater Protection for Children in Yemen”

by Emelia Allan “If children count…we must count them.” March 18, 2015. Article 7 (1) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1990) stipulates that “the child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.”[i] Yet…

Continue reading “An Identity for Every Child: Birth Registration and Equity in Ghana”

“Remedies can’t be tied to a broken system.” Worldwide, about 290,000 women die each year from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. From a numerical perspective, this figure appears to denote a situation less urgent than that suggested by the figures for other global health threats, such as malaria (630,000 per year) and HIV (1.5 million). In the developing world, where 90 percent of maternal deaths take place, however,…

Continue reading “On the Far Reaching Consequences of Maternal Mortality”

“Children should not labor in the mines; they should go to schools financed by them.” December 18, 2014: The 1999 International Labour Organization Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour (Convention No. 182) has at last entered into force today, in Myanmar. The Convention requires states parties to “take immediate and effective measures” to secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour. It applies to…

Continue reading “ILO Convention 182: What Myanmar Should Do Next”

In recognition of International Migrants Day (December 18), we reflect on the movements of people across borders–the myriad issues that drive people from “home” to new lands in which they take on the new identity of the “other.” With a particular focus on children, Jacqueline Bhabha explores this issue through the multilidiscplinary lens of human rights in her book Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age, published earlier…

Continue reading “Human Like Me — Somewhat: Child Migrants in Our Global Age”

Statement of Solidarity with the People of Peshawar The deadly attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar on December 16, 2014 constitutes an assault against us all. We are appalled by the terrible loss of life suffered by the school children and teachers and acknowledge with deep sorrow those who died in this massacre. We extend our deepest sympathy to the families and to our colleagues in Pakistan. We…

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FXB Center instructor Magda Matache’s is featured in two short films currently available on the website of Facing History and Ourselves, a global education project focusing on discrimination and racial injustice. In “We Call Ourselves Roma” Matache eloquently summarizes the Roma’s history of statelessness and fight for recognition and justice in Europe and across the world. The second video, “Tackling Discrimination against Roma in Schools,” deals specifically with the marginalization…

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“…even in low-income countries, important demands for health-related entitlements are being framed in terms of legally enforceable claims.” We’re delighted to announce the publication of the latest issue of Health and Human Rights Journal, which marks the 20th anniversary of its founding. The new issue has a special focus on health rights in the judicial context. From the special guest editor (and our policy director, Alicia Ely Yamin): “The articles…

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by Orla Kelly “…sustainable development, without the protection of children from violence and abuse, is impossible.” The mission to end all forms of violence and abuse against the world’s children will likely be included in the post 2015 sustainable development goals (SDGs) in the form of the following targets: the elimination of violence, abuse and torture against all children (16.2) the elimination of all forms of violence against women and…

Continue reading “Ending Violence against the World’s Children Post 2015: Targets and Tempered Optimism”

by Angela Duger “…it is victims like Pratibha and Gunjan whom we must keep in the forefront of our minds.” This is a story about two teenage girls, Pratibha and Gunjan, who lived in a remote village in Jharkhand, India. Pratibha was studying in a government school and dreamed of becoming an English teacher. In 2008 the girls left their village with the promise of a job in Delhi, with…

Continue reading “A Long Way Home: Two Trafficked Children, One Local NGO”

by Krista Oehlke “Vulnerable children are frequently treated as culpable “illegals” or warehoused outsiders, rather than minors with potential and ambition in need of care.” FXB Harvard Research Director Jacqueline Bhabha delivered a keynote address at a global Save the Children meeting on child protection challenges facing child migrants in Stockholm on Monday November 24, 2014.  Convened to inform the next strategic planning phase of the world’s largest child rights NGO, the…

Continue reading “Why We Can’t Ignore Child Protection in Migration”

The violent conflict in Syria has caused the displacement of almost 11 million people to date. Over 3 million refugees have flowed into Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraq. Their numbers have severely strained humanitarian capacity, which is further weakened by insufficient funding and inadequate policies. The situation is a grave one for the estimated 600,000 Syrian refugees living in Jordan. This brief presents an assessment of the most urgent issues…

Continue reading “New FXB Policy Brief: Syrian Refugees in Jordan”

The catastrophic Ebola crisis unfolding in West Africa offers many lessons, not least for global anti-poverty efforts. These will culminate in a set of targets, to be agreed by the United Nations in 2015, known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). First of all, the crisis should lead to a re-think of the triumphalism that has marked some of the global health debate in recent years, with some projecting a…

Continue reading “Blog: Alicia Yamin on Why Ebola is a Human Rights Crisis”

Along with Rifat Atun, professor of Global Health Systems at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, and Julio Frenk, HSPH dean, FXB policy director Alicia Ely Yamin has contributed to a Special Series issue of The Lancet released October 16, 2014. The theme of the issue is universal health care in Latin America. Human Rights-based Approaches to Health in Latin America, co-authored with Ariel Frisancho of ForoSalud, in Peru,…

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 On Twitter: @FXBHarvard; Hashtag: #ACostTooHigh “Women’s Lives Matter” was a discussion on October 7, 2014, about the dramatic economic and social impacts of a woman’s death during pregnancy or childbirth, featuring an expert group of panelists. The discussion emphasized strategies for using research findings to advocate for sustained funding and new policy approaches  for reproductive and maternal health in the context of post-2015 agenda setting. The panelists were: Dr. Ana Langer…

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July 29, 2014 — The FXB Center for Health and Human Rights today published a briefing paper following field work in Kosovo in June 2013. The team investigated the conditions of the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians in five communities, identifying the main issues faced by these minority communities, including forced repatriation, access to education and discrimination. The report concludes with recommendations for national and international governments and organizations to respect the rights of…

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Special Issue on Climate Justice and the Right to Health June 13, 2014 — The FXB Center today released Issue 16.1 of the Health and Human Rights Journal, which has a special theme on climate justice and the right to health. This issue includes an editorial co-written by editor-in-chief Paul Farmer, as well as a foreword to the climate justice section by Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and Human…

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In late March, FXB Center Director Jennifer Leaning and FXB Fellow Elizabeth Newnham traveled to China at the invitation of the Collaborating Centre for Oxford University and Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) for Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response (CCOUC). Leaning and Newnham joined a group from CCOUC’s Ethnic Minority Health Project to explore issues of disaster preparedness and public health issues in a remote, flood-prone village in southern Sichuan…

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Application Deadline is July 1, 2014 The Global School on Socioeconomic Rights: Course on Health Rights Litigation will be held November 3-5, 2014. Applications are due to rcantor@hsph.harvard.edu by July 1, 2014. Read more about the Global School on Socioeconomic Rights: 2014 Course on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Litigation and access the application. The last fifteen years have seen a tremendous growth in the number of health rights…

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February 11, 2014 — A new Commission from The Lancet and the University of Oslo, of which Jennifer Leaning, FXB Center Director, and Julio Frenk, Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, are both members, has issued an urgent call for a reform of global decision-making to address health inequalities worldwide. The current global governance system fails to protect the public’s health and the distribution of health risks remains…

Continue reading “Commission on Global Governance for Health Publishes Findings in The Lancet”