The United States stands apart from other nations in opposing the right to health under international law, with longstanding conservative opposition to a human right to health holding back policy efforts to realize health care and underlying determinants of health—at home and throughout the world. Over the past 80 years, American conservative ideology has presented persistent political obstacles to the advancement of health as a human right, challenging who is entitled to rights and what those rights entail. This ideological opposition has reframed health as a narrow privilege for some rather than an expansive right for all. Examining the historical evolution of the right to health since the end of World War II, this paper analyzes how shifting conservative opposition over the years has undermined human rights in health policy and culminated in existential challenges for health systems. The paper concludes that the guarantee of health as a human right must be codified as a defining principle of American democracy, enshrining constitutive commitments to health as a foundation for a healthier future under law.
Since the 1970s, the World Health Organization (WHO) has advanced “traditional medicine” as a global policy category for culturally grounded health care. In South America, this framework has encountered a distinct political landscape in which traditional peoples have emerged as collective subjects mobilizing around rights, territorial claims, and expanding conceptions of citizenship. This paper examines how the codification of “tradition” from an identity category into a health regulatory term reconfigures the conditions under which difference can be expressed, claimed, and sustained. Drawing on archival research across 10 South American countries, as well as WHO and United Nations documentation, the study traces how the global framework has been incorporated, requalified, or displaced across distinct national contexts. The analysis reveals a spectrum of regulatory arrangements in which institutional incorporation and the political force of collective difference are not commensurate, ranging from frameworks that engage with the political projects through which traditional peoples have sought to reshape citizenship to those in which “tradition” operates as a market authorization criterion detached from the subjects who sustain it. The codification of tradition into governable categories does not simply extend recognition to those who bear it; it reconfigures the terms under which they can act as political subjects.
The well-being of Palestinians living under prolonged Israeli occupation is deeply conditioned by the structures of deprivation and control that shape daily life. Using data from 3,000 adults residing in refugee camps and surrounding urban areas of the West Bank, this study examines how deprivation, political violence, and human rights violations relate to well-being as measured by the World Health Organization-Five Well-Being Index. Nearly three-quarters of respondents (73.8%) reported poor wellbeing. Material deprivation showed the strongest association with well-being: Those reporting low or moderate deprivation had 1.7- and 2.4-fold higher odds of poor well-being, respectively. Household exposure to political violence was associated with higher odds of poor well-being with an odds ratio (OR) of 1.35, while human rights violations by the Israeli military and the Palestinian Authority was associated with higher odds of poor well-being with an OR of 1.51 and 1.72, respectively. An interaction between locality and displacement revealed that stable camp residents had lower odds of poor wellbeing, while those displaced from camps had the highest risk. These findings show that in the West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory, well-being reflects the social geography of inequality, where displacement, deprivation, and ongoing political violence transform daily existence into a struggle for security and dignity, rendering the right to health inseparable from the right to live freely and safely.
Informed consent is both a foundational principle of research ethics and a human right grounded in self-determination and bodily integrity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, legislative attempts were made in South Korea to bypass informed consent and ethics review requirements for research involving patients with infectious diseases. Framed as emergency measures to accelerate biomedical innovation, the proposals sparked resistance from a broad coalition of civil society actors, including human rights advocates, patient organizations, labor unions, medical professionals, and bioethics scholars. This coalition, drawing on international bioethics norms and lessons from past research ethics controversies, mounted a coordinated public response, warning that such deregulation could erode fundamental ethical safeguards and set a concerning precedent. Their efforts helped prevent the proposed legislation from advancing in the parliamentary process. This defense of informed consent must be understood within the context of South Korea’s post-authoritarian democratic evolution. Decades of civic struggle—from resistance to military dictatorship to the response to a constitutional crisis triggered by a martial law declaration in 2024—have shaped a politically conscious and ethically engaged public. This case study illustrates how informed consent can function not simply as a technical or procedural requirement but as a hard-won civil right anchored in democratic participation. South Korea’s experience offers globally relevant insights into the role of civic vigilance in safeguarding human rights, especially during public health crises and emergency rule.
This study explores the attitudes of mental health care professionals in Lithuania toward human rights principles, provisions, and standards as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and their application in mental health care. Employing a mixedmethods convergent design, the study integrates survey data (n = 390) with qualitative findings from six focus groups with professionals and service users (n = 36). The results reveal notable differences across professional roles, institutional settings, and experience levels. Medical psychologists consistently demonstrated more human rights-supportive attitudes, while nurse assistants and professionals in large inpatient facilities were more likely to endorse coercive practices and question the full implementation of rights in practice. Additionally, mid-career professionals and those working in smaller facilities expressed greater openness to reform and the practical utility of the CRPD. Qualitative findings further highlighted systemic barriers such as stigma, biomedical dominance, and resource constraints. These findings underscore the importance of targeted training, institutional reform, and sustained political will to align Lithuania’s mental health care services with international human rights standards. Further longitudinal research is warranted to examine how attitudes toward human rights in mental health care evolve, especially in response to policy changes, reforms, and targeted training initiatives.
Despite ongoing criticism, the practice of involuntary admissions to locked units remains widespread globally. In this paper, we focus on secure units within residential social care institutions in Slovenia, which are intended to provide special protection for individuals deemed dangerous to themselves or others. We conducted semi-structured individual and group interviews with institutional management, secure unit staff, and residents in all secure units across the country. The findings reveal three key issues. First, the spatial congregation of residents within secure units tends to exacerbate, rather than reduce, risk. Second, instead of addressing the specific risks that prompted admission, secure units often implement generalized restrictions aimed at maintaining internal safety. Third, the overall institutional structure significantly limits the provision of individualized care and constrains both staff and resident agency. Although secure units are formally defined as protective environments, the study suggests that they function primarily as institutional containers. As such, they are not only in violation of human rights but are also ineffective in fulfilling their intended purpose due to inherent institutional limitations. We argue that secure units should be abolished and replaced by community-based services.
Globally, gender inequality is deepening, with nearly 40% of countries experiencing regression between 2019 and 2022 and significant backlash against women’s rights in 2025. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) provides a legally binding framework for accountability, yet the potential of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women—the body that monitors state compliance with CEDAW—is constrained by the absence of systematic monitoring tools. This paper introduces the CEDAW Index, an artificial intelligencesupported digital dashboard designed to strengthen accountability by consolidating state reports, civil society shadow reports, and committee concluding observations. The current pilot focuses on recommendations regarding gender-based violence, with a framework designed to be extended across the full scope of CEDAW. We describe how the CEDAW Index assigns implementation status to each recommendation; tracks variables such as region, income group, and humanitarian crisis context; and integrates civil society perspectives to counterbalance government reporting. Pilot analyses of the most recent CEDAW reviews from 117 countries between 1997 and 2020 informed the dashboard’s design and identified 423 laws that governments implemented or amended in response to law-related recommendations, representing 46% of such recommendations made by the committee during those reviews. We examine challenges associated with government opacity, artificial intelligence, and oversimplification, while arguing that the index offers a novel pathway to enhance transparency, amplify advocacy, and reinforce women’s rights implementation globally.
