2006 - The Right to Health: Prospects and Approaches
2006-Health, Human Rights, and the University
Op-ed From The Michigan Daily
There is a human right to health; there has to be. In a world where 11 million children die each year before the age of five, we can no longer afford to conceive of health as a marketable commodity. The concept of treating health and economic disparities as a human rights issue far predates the outrage articulated these days by sunglassed spokespeople. Its origin stems from some of the founding documents of the World Health Organization and United Nations. In particular, Article 25 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services…”
The right to health doesn’t necessarily mean universal health care as interpreted by American politics. Instead, a right to health approach emphasizes standards of quality and access with regard to “fundamental determinants of health” such as safe water and food, basic treatments, essential medicines, and adequate housing. Criterion for success becomes the health of patients rather than profitability of services. If we agree that the underlying purpose of a health care system is to ensure everyone has a basic level of health, then the demise of health as a luxury is not far behind. Thus, public participation in health-related decision-making at the community, national, and international level is essential. The renewal of health as an accessible, affordable, and universal right is not a radical notion. Above all, it means understanding the status quo both at home and abroad in the terms of a social breakdown, instead of a market reality.
Despite widespread consensus on the right to health in international human rights norms, so far in the American dialogue it hasn’t received the same kind of primacy we’ve seen with civil and political human rights. This is within our power to change. As students, we can work to utilize the resources and social capital of our universities to respect and cultivate the observation of all human rights, including the right to health. We can call upon public universities to serve more robustly as public institutions. We can urge the University of Michigan to serve as a positive non-state actor in the very international system it seeks to engage, and we can insist it do so by speaking the language of human rights.
And some of us have been, with admittedly mixed results.
The primary and most serious responsibility of the University is to educate, and programs for human rights education are well underway. The International Perspectives on Human Rights Initiative has coordinated and sponsored courses for the last two years. The recently approved International Studies minor allows students to choose human rights as one of its thematic emphases. But it’s okay to want more. Limiting dialogue on human rights to extra-curricular groups at this university has forged an essentially isolated political subculture that is powerless to bring human rights fully into the social and political mainstream. The kind of social progress that advocates really crave can only be reached through consensus, and so we must also crave classrooms with diversity of opinion, facilitated by faculty in pursuit of productive and solution-oriented debate that can give students the tools and knowledge they need for the future.
An academic approach to human rights is the first and most crucial step in enabling the University of Michigan to participate in the international system on behalf of the dispossessed. The potential of our university to promote a complete definition of human rights cannot be underestimated. Our research meaningfully influences the national and international academic and political dialogue. In particular, scholarly discourse on health as a human right can facilitate a new understanding of health within America, both in terms of its own health care system and the way it engages a world of extreme poverty and pandemics.
To ensure the success of this project, we students have to start approaching human rights as what we are: students. We can be the partner the University needs to guide our education.
There is a human right to health; there has to be. In a world where 11 million children die each year before the age of five, we can no longer afford to conceive of health as a marketable commodity. The concept of treating health and economic disparities as a human rights issue far predates the outrage articulated these days by sunglassed spokespeople. Its origin stems from some of the founding documents of the World Health Organization and United Nations. In particular, Article 25 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services…”
The right to health doesn’t necessarily mean universal health care as interpreted by American politics. Instead, a right to health approach emphasizes standards of quality and access with regard to “fundamental determinants of health” such as safe water and food, basic treatments, essential medicines, and adequate housing. Criterion for success becomes the health of patients rather than profitability of services. If we agree that the underlying purpose of a health care system is to ensure everyone has a basic level of health, then the demise of health as a luxury is not far behind. Thus, public participation in health-related decision-making at the community, national, and international level is essential. The renewal of health as an accessible, affordable, and universal right is not a radical notion. Above all, it means understanding the status quo both at home and abroad in the terms of a social breakdown, instead of a market reality.
Despite widespread consensus on the right to health in international human rights norms, so far in the American dialogue it hasn’t received the same kind of primacy we’ve seen with civil and political human rights. This is within our power to change. As students, we can work to utilize the resources and social capital of our universities to respect and cultivate the observation of all human rights, including the right to health. We can call upon public universities to serve more robustly as public institutions. We can urge the University of Michigan to serve as a positive non-state actor in the very international system it seeks to engage, and we can insist it do so by speaking the language of human rights.
And some of us have been, with admittedly mixed results.
The primary and most serious responsibility of the University is to educate, and programs for human rights education are well underway. The International Perspectives on Human Rights Initiative has coordinated and sponsored courses for the last two years. The recently approved International Studies minor allows students to choose human rights as one of its thematic emphases. But it’s okay to want more. Limiting dialogue on human rights to extra-curricular groups at this university has forged an essentially isolated political subculture that is powerless to bring human rights fully into the social and political mainstream. The kind of social progress that advocates really crave can only be reached through consensus, and so we must also crave classrooms with diversity of opinion, facilitated by faculty in pursuit of productive and solution-oriented debate that can give students the tools and knowledge they need for the future.
An academic approach to human rights is the first and most crucial step in enabling the University of Michigan to participate in the international system on behalf of the dispossessed. The potential of our university to promote a complete definition of human rights cannot be underestimated. Our research meaningfully influences the national and international academic and political dialogue. In particular, scholarly discourse on health as a human right can facilitate a new understanding of health within America, both in terms of its own health care system and the way it engages a world of extreme poverty and pandemics.
To ensure the success of this project, we students have to start approaching human rights as what we are: students. We can be the partner the University needs to guide our education.
