Human Rights Mainstreaming in the World Health Organization: a Comparative Study of Regional Offices (2015)
Undergraduate: Maximillian Seunik
Faculty Advisor: Benjamin Meier
Department: Health Policy & Management
Abstract: In 1997, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan mandated the full mainstreaming of human rights into all of the organization¿¿¿s principal activities and programs as a ¿¿¿cross-cutting¿¿¿ approach. This call spurred the development of an increasingly shared understanding of human rights among UN agencies including within the World Health Organization (WHO). Specifically, WHO has faced obstacles in these efforts in each of its six largely autonomous regional offices: Africa, the Americas, South-East Asia, Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Western Pacific. With a lack of human rights leadership in a fragmented global health governance landscape, regional health offices have sought individually to advance human rights and support states in realizing a rights-based approach to health, aided by organizational structures uncommon within the UN system. Through documentary analysis of regional office policies and semi-structured interviews with human rights focal points in each of the six WHO regional offices, regional implementation of human rights through regional health governance was analyzed. Interviews examined factors related to the development, implementation and future application of human rights in regional office policies and programs. Documentary records from regional offices contextualized information gleaned from interviews. Comparisons across regions were drawn to isolate several of the factors critical to human rights success.