Category Archives: Uncategorized

Human Rights Day: Action on Rights of People who Use Drugs

From the Graduate Institute Global Health Programme newsletter

December 10 is Human Rights Day, marking the UN General Assembly’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. This year, Decmeber 10 saw a flurry of activity around the right to health, including a major new statement on the rights of people who use drugs. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, Dainius Puras, published a powerful open letter to the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The letter received widespread media attention. Continue reading

Getting human rights into global health indicators

From the Health and Human Rights journal special issue on evidence of the impact of human rights on health:

In response to new scientific developments, UNAIDS, WHO, and global health financing institutions have joined together to promote a “fast-track” global scale-up of testing and treatment programs, setting ambitious targets with the goal of ending the three diseases by 2030. However, these indicators only nominally reference the catastrophic impact that human rights abuses have on access to health services; they also do not measure the positive impact provided by law reform, legal aid, and other health-related human rights programs. To ensure that these biomedical programs have impact, UN agencies and health financing mechanisms must begin to more systematically and proactively integrate human rights policy and practice into their modeling and measurement tools.

See the full article here

Monkey on a Mission

674px-Squirrel_monkeyFor the past few years, I’ve been monkeying around with an adventure story for kids. It’s now finished and online as a serial, with a new chapter each week.

Monkey on a Mission is loosely based on the Chinese classic, Journey to the West. In ancient China, a misbehaving monkey just can’t stop getting into trouble. When Monkey gets into the biggest trouble in the history of the universe, the Jade Emperor, who lives in the sky, orders Monkey to find the Buddha and bring back a copy of his famous book.  The only problem: the Buddha lives far away, across the Silk Road, in India.

To find the Buddha, the little monkey must cross rivers, deserts and mountains, and fight giant demons. Luckily he has three friends to help him finish the mission: a teenager, a pig, and a wise monk.

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