Human Rights for Health across the United Nations

The United Nations (UN) plays a central role in realizing human rights to advance global health. Looking beyond state obligations, the UN has called on all its specialized agencies to mainstream human rights across all their activities. With globalization compelling these UN institutions to meet an expanding set of global challenges to underlying determinants of health, human rights are guiding these international organizations in addressing public health. These international organizations within the UN system are actively engaged in implementing health-related human rights—in both their mission and their actions to carry out that mission. Through this mainstreaming of human rights, global health institutions have embraced human rights treaty obligations as a framework for global governance. Given the dramatic development of human rights law through the UN and the parallel proliferation of UN institutions devoted to global health and development, there arises an imperative to understand the implementation of human rights in global health governance. This special section analyzes the evolving UN focus on health and human rights in global governance, examining an expansive set of UN institutions that employ human rights in responding to public health challenges in a rapidly globalizing world. To understand the ways in which human rights are implemented, this special section examines the role of institutions across the UN system in the realization of human rights for public health. Drawing from our recent Oxford University Press volume on Human Rights in Global Health: Rights-Based Governance for a Globalizing World, this special section brings together several of the contributors to analyze ongoing efforts to reform UN institutions to mainstream human rights. These contributors—from academia, nongovernmental organizations, and the UN system—explore (1) the foundations of human rights as a framework for global governance, (2) the work of UN organizations across a range of health-related human rights, (3) the influence of rights-based economic governance on public health, and (4) the advancement of health through UN human rights institutions. Looking beyond the chapters in Human Rights in Global Health, this special section examines how international institutions are changing to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with sweeping implications for the mainstreaming of human rights for health across the UN

Human Rights in Global Health Governance

Human rights frame global health governance. In codifying a normative foundation for global governance in the aftermath of World War II, states came together under the auspices of an emergent United Nations (UN) to develop human rights under international law. Human rights law, establishing international norms to advance global justice, has thereby become a universally accepted framework for global health, and the past seventy years have witnessed an evolution of international human rights law to define the highest attainable standard of health. Conceptualizing health disparities as rights violations, these health-related human rights offer universal standards to frame government responsibilities for the progressive realization of health and facilitate legal accountability for health policy. Where globalizing forces have created an imperative for global governance institutions to meet an expanding set of global health challenges, human rights have come to guide institutions of global health governance.As rights-based approaches have become fundamental to global health governance, the proliferation of global governance institutions has warranted a wider sharing of human rights responsibilities for health beyond the UN human rights system. Institutions of global governance are not only seen as instrumental to the development of international human rights law but also as essential to assuring the implementation of rights-based obligations in a rapidly globalizing world. Over the past twenty-five years, the UN has sought to formalize these human rights implementation responsibilities across the entire global governance system. Translating international law into organizational action, global governance institutions seek to “mainstream” human rights across their policies, programs, and practices. To understand the ways in which human rights are realized in global health, this Special Issue of Global Health Governance examines the role of global health governance institutions in structuring the implementation of human rights for public health

Has Global Health Law Risen to Meet the COVID-19 Challenge? Revisiting the International Health Regulations to Prepare for Future Threats

Global health law is essential in responding to the infectious disease threats of a globalizing world, where no single country, or border, can wall off disease. Yet, the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic has tested the essential legal foundations of the global health system. Within weeks, the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has circumnavigated the globe, bringing the world to a halt and exposing the fragility of the international legal order. Reflecting on how global health law will emerge in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be crucial to examine the lessons learned in the COVID-19 response and the reforms required to rebuild global health institutions while maintaining core values of human rights, rule of law, and global solidarity in the face of unprecedented threats

What accounts for the changes in U.S. fiscal policy transmission?

Using vector autoregressions on U.S. time series for 1957-1979 and 1983-2004, we find government spending shocks to have stronger effects on output, consumption, and wages in the earlier sample. We try to account for this observation within a DSGE model featuring price rigidities and limited asset market participation. Specifically, we estimate the structural parameters of the model for both samples by matching impulse responses. Model-based counterfactual experiments suggest that increased asset market participation accounts for some of the changes in fiscal transmission. However, the key quantitative factor appears to be the more active monetary policy of the Volcker-Greenspan period. JEL Classification: E21, E62, E63Asset Market Participation, DSGE, Fiscal Policy, government spending, Minimum Distance Estimation, monetary policy, Vector autoregression

Tailored gamification and serious game framework based on fuzzy logic for saving energy in connected thermostats

Connected thermostats (CTs) often save less energy than predicted because consumers may not know how to use them and may not be engaged in saving energy. Additionally, several models perform contrary to consumers’ expectations and are thus not used the way they are intended to. As a result, CTs save less energy and are underused in households. This paper reviews aspects of gamification and serious games focused on engaging consumers. A gamification and serious games framework is proposed for saving energy that is tailored by a fuzzy logic system to motivate connected thermostat consumers. This intelligent gamification framework can be used to customize the gamification and serious game strategy to each consumer so that fuzzy logic systems can be adapted according to the requirements of each consumer. The framework is designed to teach, engage, and motivate consumers while helping them save electrical energy when using their thermostats. It is described the proposed framework as well as a mockup that can be run on a cellphone. Although this framework is designed to be implemented in CTs, it can be translated to their energy devices in smart homes

70 Years of Human Rights in Global Health: Drawing on a Contentious Past to Secure a Hopeful Future

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted on Dec 10, 1948, established a modern human rights foundation that has become a cornerstone of global health, central to public health policies, programmes, and practices. To commemorate the 70th anniversary of this seminal declaration, we trace the evolution of human rights in global health, linking the past, present, and future of health as a human right. This future remains uncertain. As contemporary challenges imperil continuing advancements, threatening both human rights protections and global health governance, the future will depend, as it has in the past, on sustained political engagement to realise human rights in global health

Environmental conditions of a salt-marsh biodiversity experiment on the island of Spiekeroog (Germany)

Field experiments investigating biodiversity and ecosystem functioning require the observation of abiotic parameters, especially when carried out in the intertidal zone. An experiment for biodiversity–ecosystem functioning was set up in the intertidal zone of the back-barrier salt marsh of Spiekeroog Island in the German Bight. Here, we report the accompanying instrumentation, maintenance, data acquisition, data handling and data quality control as well as monitoring results observed over a continuous period from September 2014 to April 2017. Time series of abiotic conditions were measured at several sites in the vicinity of newly built experimental salt-marsh islands on the tidal flat. Meteorological measurements were conducted from a weather station (WS, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.870988), oceanographic conditions were sampled through a bottom-mounted recording current meter (RCM, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.877265) and a bottom-mounted tide and wave recorder (TWR, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.877258). Tide data are essential in calculating flooding duration and flooding frequency with respect to different salt-marsh elevation zones. Data loggers (DL) for measuring the water level (DL-W, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.877267), temperature (DL-T, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.877257), light intensity (DL-L, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.877256) and conductivity (DL-C, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.877266) were deployed at different elevational zones on the experimental islands and the investigated salt-marsh plots. A data availability of 80% for 17 out of 23 sensors was achieved. Results showed the influence of seasonal and tidal dynamics on the experimental islands. Nearby salt-marsh plots exhibited some differences, e.g., in temperature dynamics. Thus, a consistent, multi-parameter, long-term dataset is available as a basis for further biodiversity and ecosystem functioning studies

The VLQ Calorimeter of H1 at HERA: A Highly Compact Device for Measurements of Electrons and Photons under Very Small Scattering Angles

In 1998, the detector H1 at HERA has been equipped with a small backward spectrometer, the Very Low Q^2 (VLQ) spectrometer comprising a silicon tracker, a tungsten - scintillator sandwich calorimeter, and a Time-of-Flight system. The spectrometer was designed to measure electrons scattered under very low angles, equivalent to very low squared four - momentum transfers Q^2, and high energy photons with good energy and spatial resolution. The VLQ was in operation during the 1999 and 2000 run periods. This paper describes the design and construction of the VLQ calorimeter, a compact device with a fourfold projective energy read-out, and its performance during test runs and in the experiment.Comment: 32 pages, 25 figures, 2 tables (To be submitted to Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A

Introduction: Global Health and Human Rights

This introduction highlights the foundational importance of human rights for global health and provides an academic framework for this book by laying out the role of human rights under international law as a basis for public health. Part I seeks to define the evolving conceptualization of health, examining both the shifting focus from medicine to public health and the shifting response from international health to global health. Framing global health as a human rights imperative, Part II examines the establishment of human rights under international law, the implementation of these rights in public policy, and the development of rights for public health. With this development of human rights giving rise to the field of “health and human rights,” Part III explores the recent birth of this interdisciplinary field, creating a field of practice that now requires a formal academic foundation. Part IV describes the academic contribution of this foundation text to the field and outlines the structure of this comprehensive volume, delineating the chapters that describe the normative development, policy implementation, contemporary application, and new challenges in the field. This introduction concludes by reaffirming the inextricable linkages between health and human rights, calling on scholars, practitioners, and advocates to work together to advance human rights in global health