Public Health. 2014 Feb;128(2):179-87. doi: 10.1016/j.puhe.2013.08.012. Epub 2014 Jan 15.

The evolution of human rights in World Health Organization policy and the future of human rights through global health governance.

Author information

1: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 218 Abernethy Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27514, USA. Electronic address: bmeier@unc.edu.
2: Bradford University Law School, UK.

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO) was intended to serve at the forefront of efforts to realize human rights to advance global health, and yet this promise of a rights-based approach to health has long been threatened by political constraints in international relations, organizational resistance to legal discourses, and medical ambivalence toward human rights. Through legal research on international treaty obligations, historical research in the WHO organizational archives, and interview research with global health stakeholders, this research examines WHO's contributions to (and, in many cases, negligence of) the rights-based approach to health. Based upon such research, this article analyzes the evolving role of WHO in the development and implementation of human rights for global health, reviews the current state of human rights leadership in the WHO Secretariat, and looks to future institutions to reclaim the mantle of human rights as a normative framework for global health governance.