Health and Human Rights Seminar (Fall 2006)

This seminar provides opportunities for research, writing, and discussion on health and human rights. Participants will conduct independent research and scholarly writing on important problems at the intersection of population health and the human rights. This seminar examines the interrelationships between modern concepts of public health and international human rights. The first relationship is the impact of health policies, programs, and practices on human rights (e.g., compulsory public health interventions such as isolation or quarantine). The second relationship is the health impacts resulting from violations of human rights (e.g., torture, inhumane and degrading treatment, and rape). The third relationship is the inextricable linkage between health and human rights (i.e., the synergistic relationship between health and human rights). The seminar will use the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights, and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,as the dominant legal instruments in the analysis. We will carefully consider the meaning of the right to health and the material differences between civil and political rights, on the one hand, and economic, social, and cultural rights on the other.