Human Rights Accountability Through Treaty Bodies: Examining Human Rights Treaty Monitoring for Water and Sanitation

Framing scholarship on human rights accountability through treaty bodies, this article examines the water and sanitation content of state human rights reporting to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In this novel application of analytic coding methods to state human rights reports, the authors trace the relationship between human rights advancements on water and sanitation and treaty body monitoring of water and sanitation systems. These results raise an imperative for universal human rights indicators on the rights to water and sanitation, providing an empirical basis to develop universal indicators that would streamline reporting to human rights treaty bodies, facilitate monitoring of state reports, and ensure accountability for human rights implementation

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

Improving performance in quantum mechanics with explicit incentives to correct mistakes

An earlier investigation found that the performance of advanced students in a quantum mechanics course did not automatically improve from midterm to final exam on identical problems even when they were provided the correct solutions and their own graded exams. Here, we describe a study, which extended over four years, in which upper-level undergraduate students in a quantum physics course were given four identical problems in both the midterm exam and final exam. Approximately half of the students were given explicit incentives to correct their mistakes in the midterm exam. In particular, they could get back up to 50\% of the points lost on each midterm exam problem. The solutions to the midterm exam problems were provided to all students in both groups but those who corrected their mistakes were provided the solution after they submitted their corrections to the instructor. The performance on the same problems on the final exam suggests that students who were given incentives to correct their mistakes significantly outperformed those who were not given an incentive. The incentive to correct the mistakes had greater impact on the final exam performance of students who had not performed well on the midterm exam.Comment: accepted for publication Physical Review Physics Education Research in 2016, 20 pages, PACS: 01.40Fk,01.40.gb,01.40G-, Keywords: physics education research, learning from mistakes, pedagogy, quantum mechanics, teaching, learnin

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

Intervention, ideology, strategic imperatives: An examination of fluctuating relations between Russia/USSR and sub-Saharan Africa

Throughout the duration of the Cold War and its aftermath, sub-Saharan Africa has been a hotbed of geopolitical contestation. This article examines the role of the Soviet Union and its successor state, the Russian Federation, as a major regional actor. Beginning with Soviet intervention in the Congo in the 1950s, the article posits that sub-Saharan Africa was an initially marginal region for Soviet strategists which became increasingly significant as the Cold War progressed. Soviet strategy was driven by both raw questions of geopolitical clout and a broader attempt to export its ideology to the Third World. The article elucidates the consequences of intervention from both Soviet and local perspectives, emphasising the agency of African states who were able to leverage superpower competition in pursuit of their own interests. However, the dramatic collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in a complete retreat from Africa as strategic priorities in Moscow changed rapidly. Recent Russian re-engagement with the region has continuities with Soviet strategy, but there are marked shifts in its underlying rationale. Under Putin, there has been a concerted attempt to form salutary economic and security relationships with regional autocracies, predicated on transactional realpolitik.&nbsp

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

Student-Faculty Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship Research Synopsis: Complement Resistance in \u3ci\u3eBartonella\u3c/i\u3e Species

Of the 31 validated species in the genus Bartonella, 11 are agents of serious infectious diseases of humans, among them Carrión’s disease, trench fever, cat-scratch disease, and bacillary angiomatosis. Bartonella are extremely widespread, having been found in virtually every type of mammal surveyed. As facultative intracellular parasites employing hemotrophy (infection of red blood cells), the key to their success comes in their ability to survive within the bloodstream of their host or reservoir. It has been demonstrated that bartonellae are resistant to the effects of complement proteins in serum, the primary agents of the innate immune system. Although this effect has been repeatedly observed, the molecular basis of Bartonella’s resistance remains undetermined. The overall objective of this research is to examine the genetic and molecular components of complement resistance in bartonellae using Bartonella bacilliformis (Bb) as a model species. In order to address our hypothesis that complement resistance has a genetic basis and likely encodes a surface-exposed protein or component of the bacterium, we had three original experimental aims. In aim 1, we planned to use the Himar1 transposon to generate a signature-tagged mutagenesis (STM) library of Bb. In aim 2, we were to screen the library to identify the specific gene(s) involved with serum complement resistance. In aim 3, we were going to analyze the gene(s) that confer this resistance by automated DNA sequencing and genetic manipulation. The results of this study would allow us to analyze complement resistance in Bartonella and increase our understanding of complement resistance in other pathogenic bacteria