James Goudkamp and Donal Nolan, Contributory Negligence in the Twenty‐First Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019, 320 pp + xxv, hb £95.00, pb £29.99.
| Author | Per Laleng |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12493 |
| Published date | 01 March 2020 |
| Date | 01 March 2020 |
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REVIEWS
Benjamin Mason Meier and Lawrence O. Gostin (eds),Human Rights in Global
Health: Rights-Based Governance for a Globalizing World, New York:
Oxford University Press, 2018, 616 pp, pb, £39.99.
Recent outbreaks, such as Ebola or Zika, keep reminding us that in a globalised
world, health cannot be conceived as a state-centric issue. More positively,
medical treatments found through ground-breaking research can also travel
swiftly across continents. However, the prevalence of ill-health and access to its
cures are not often reliant on coincidence. Certain groups of individuals tend
to suffer a higher burden of diseases than others. What can we learn from this
and how can we address it?
Whilst not the first discipline coming to the mind of many, human rights law
has – in fact – a lot to say on global health inequities, thanks to its underpinning
values: the quest for dignity and equality for all human beings. As we step into
the seventh decade since the human right to health was first recognised, and
the third decade since the health and human rights movement was formed, this
substantial edited volume by Benjamin Mason Meier and Lawrence O. Gostin
comes at an opportune time. This collection enables the reader to reflect on
how human rights have influenced and shaped global health, and what the
future holds in this field.
Forty-eight eminent scholars bring together their findings across twenty-
four chapters, by comparatively and systematically analysing how international
institutions operationalise human rights to promote global health. Authors con-
sider the origins of institutions and schemes that have a key relationship with
global health and how they have mainstreamed human rights in their opera-
tions. Their analyses identify factors which facilitate or inhibit the integ ration
of the human rights discourse in global health governance (GHG), and the
opportunities a human rights-based approach represents for this field.
The first section introduces the book’s key argument: the importance of
integrating human rights law in GHG. Chapters 1 to 4 narrate very coher-
ently how the human rights-based approach blossomed in the global health
arena, how it currently operates, and its future implications for the sustainable
development agenda. While Chapter 1 (Gostin and Mason Meier) highlights
that human rights law has become the predominant normative framework in
global health policies, programmes and practices, Chapter 2 (Ely Yamin and
Constantin) emphasises that its relationship with health (known as the ‘health
and human rights movement’) is not one field but many. Chapter 3 (Mason
Meier and Gostin) follows up on this by stressing that the fragmented use of
a human rights-based approach to health across a growing number of institu-
tions interested in global health calls for a comparative analysis of its impact on
human rights implementation. Responding to this concern, Chapter 4 (Sidib ´
e,
Nygren-Krug, McBride, and Buse) discusses the potential of the UN 2030
C2019 The Author.The Moder n Law Review C2019 The Modern Law Review Limited. (2020) 83(2) MLR 477–504
Reviews
Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals to be a unifying force for action
for GHG, under the condition that people and their rights remain its key
focuses.
The second section outlines the past, current and future role of the World
Health Organization (WHO) in developing and implementing human rights
norms to promote global health. As highlighted by Chapter 5 (Mason Meier
and Kastler), the recognition of a human right to health in the 1946 WHO
Constitution contrasts with the organisation’s reluctance to use a human rights
discourse during the first few decades of its existence, in an attempt to be
non-political. However, the WHO has further engaged with the human rights
framework since the 1970s, leading to the promotion of a human rights-based
approach to health in the 2000s. The last ten years even witnessed the creation
of a unit focusing on gender, equity and human rights, and the adoption
of a Universal Health Coverage policy relying on human rights standards,
both discussed in Chapter 6 (Thomas and Magar). Chapter 7 (Bustreo, Magar,
Khosla, Stahlhofer, and Thomas) concludes by shedding light on what could
be a bright future for human rights in the WHO, particularly when combined
with the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development, but it also stresses
that insufficient funding and staffing can jeopardise this.
The third section carries out an ambitious multi-sectoral analysis of how
different UN agencies mainstream human rights to promote global health.
Chapters 8, 10, 11 and 13 paint a relatively positive picture of what the UN
landscape looks like, and what it could look like, when promoting global health
through human rights law. Two chapters emphasise the particular mutation of
an institution’s practice following the drafting of human rights documents.
Chapter 8 (Mason Meier, Motlagh, and Rasanathan) discusses how the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 positively transformed the mission
and programming of the UN Children’s Fund in the field of health. Chapter 11
(Filmer-Wilson and Mora) argues that the 1994 International Conference on
Population and Development broadened the mandate of the UN Populations
Fund towards a more human rights-based health agenda, notably regarding
reproductive r ights and women’s rights. Chapters 10 and 13 recount the suc-
cessful integration of human rights into two initiatives from the very start.
Chapter 10 (Chapman and Tararas) outlines that human rights have always
been integrated in the agenda of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cul-
tural Organization (UNESCO), including in bioethics and sexual education
programmes. Similarly, Chapter 13 (Nygren-Krug) stresses the deep roots of
human rights norms in the strategy, leadership and culture of the Joint UN Pro-
gramme on HIV/AIDS by discussing how challenges such as the co-sponsored
nature of the Programme have even become opportunities to better promote
and improve global health. Some institutions’ practices, nonetheless, stand in
sharp contrast with those discussed above. Chapter 9 (Swepston) highlights
the difficulties faced by the International Labor Organization in conceptualis-
ing human rights through its work until relatively recently, while Chapter 12
(de Schutter and Anthes) concludes that the efforts of the UN Food and
Agriculture Organization to integrate a human r ights framework in its activi-
ties have reached a standstill, partly due to the recent declineof the r ight to food
478 C2019 The Author. The Modern Law Review C2019 The Modern Law Review Limited.
(2020) 83(2) MLR 477–504
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