Human Rights Advocate Interview Questions

Write an essay that considers the following question: Explain with examples and analyze how international law has offered global standards to institutions that underly the human rights to public health. Select 2 or 3 readings from first 3 week assigned readings (i.e., from Jan 8 to 22, inclusive, as indicated on the syllabus) to answer this question. You may use lecture notes in addition to the minimum of 2 course readings, provided you cite the example provided below; however, it is recommended that you rely principally or exclusively on readings. No outside sources are allowed. You may draw inspiration from the lectures but must ultimately demonstrate your own analysis and ideas. Format:

Running Head: HUMAN RIGHTS
INTERVENTION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW IN THE GLOBAL STANDARDS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

1HUMAN RIGHTS
Human rights is the benchmark of global health governance, which is the foundational
basis of modern policy discourses, public health advancements and programmatic interventions.
The global health has human rights as a central character in the implementation of international
laws, which affects the public health of any state. The public health issues are termed as human
rights violation, which made the international laws offer support to the global standards that
enables the government to frame responsibilities and evaluation of health policies from political
aspirations to legal accountability in the aspect of health under the ‘rights-based’ approach.
The role of human rights have been prevalent post world war 2 in the development,
protection and promotion of public health. International laws have been used for the enforcement
of global standards to institutes that makes human rights the primary basis of public health.
WHO’s human rights authority had gone through developments structured by the UN charter,
which gave meaning to the WHO constitution and it was proclaimed by the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Some examples will be given to showcase the
international laws in the intervention of global standards such as the social medicine origins of
human right in public health, which was done during the industrial revolution and reinforced
when World War 2 occurred. This aspect of social science was utilized to eradicate the
inequalities in the society caused due to the prevalence of certain diseases (Gostin & Meier,
2018). A movement known as social medicine was started due to the revolutionary discourses in
1848 with the examination of health that came to the conclusion that “medicine is a social
science, and politics nothing but a medicine at a larger scale.” This revolutionary movement
turned out to be positive in the area of enhancing public health. The rediscovery of the
underlying social determinants improved the approach of social medicines after the World War 2
through the layers of social classes and other inequalities.

2HUMAN RIGHTS
The foundation of international laws for developing human rights was becoming the
basis of global governance after the destruction of World War 2. The principles of justice are
utilized under the nascent UN to several civil, cultural, economic, social and political rights
under the international law. The International Bill of Human Rights is divided into 3 documents
known as UDHR, ICCPR and ICESCR and it is adopted through different sections by the UN
General Assembly. The international laws have given integrated approach to gender, equity and
human rights when an organizational reform was started under the World Health Assembly
(WHA), and they tried to regenerate in the year of 2011 with the collaboration of Director
General Margaret Chan of WHO, who belonged to the different unit that supported the notion of
a WHO in which every staff member has inbuilt qualities to value equity, human rights and
gender in their genetic coding. The social determinants of health are related to the gender, equity
and human rights, and 3 priorities were aligned with the WHO reform such as maximizing
efficiencies, addressing complexities and intersection of inequalities in a more dynamic and
flexible way, which is a programmatic reform, providing a voice that is in unity for the
organization to interact and communicate their visions to other public health institutions that
includes organizations that work for human and gender rights (Meier & Kastler, 2018). WHO is
the institution, which gave birth to human right to health by rapidly adopting and drafting the
WHO constitution. The preamble of this constitution declares that enjoying the wellbeing of
health is the fundamental right of every human being and it also defined health in a positive
aspect in which it mentioned that health is a state of complete wellbeing in the areas of social,
psychological, emotional and physical, including the absence of any disease. This was
maintained with the help of ‘International Sanitary Conventions’ in the year of 1946 when WHO
decided to extend their help in eradicating the negative aspects of public health by providing

3HUMAN RIGHTS
vaccinations and other means of removing infections in a larger population and it will also
include supplying people with adequate and nutritious food, medical care, health insurance and
physical education. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is working for the
same issue post World War 2 and they declared that a common protocol for every individual in
all the nations globally. The right to medical care and healthy lifestyle is a basic right for every
human, which is known as the privilege of human rights. The UN commission of human rights
designed a draft to meet the basic necessities for the global standards implementation in the
institutions that underly the human rights to public health (Thomas & Magar, 2018).

4HUMAN RIGHTS
References
Gostin, L. O., & Meier, B. M. (2018). The origins of human rights in global health. Human
rights in global health: rights-based governance in a globalizing world.
Meier, B. M., & Kastler, F. (2018). Development of human rights through WHO. Human Rights
in Global Health: Rights-Based Governance for a Globalizing World (Oxford University
Press 2018).
Thomas, R., & Magar, V. (2018). Mainstreaming human rights across WHO. Human rights in
global health: Rights-based governance for a globalizing world, 109-130.