Human Rights Frameworks, Strategies and Tools

Human Rights Frameworks, Strategies and Tools for Policymaking
Gillian MacNaughton, Executive Director of PHRGE, and Mariah McGill, PHRGE Ford Foundation Fellow, are working on several projects to develop and document the use of human rights frameworks, strategies and tools to advance economic and social rights through human rights monitoring and policymaking processes. Human rights practitioners have traditionally relied upon a limited toolbox, including litigation, naming and shaming, and letter-writing campaigns, which all address violations of human rights. Today, human rights practitioners are using a variety of pro-active human rights strategies and tools - including human rights impact assessment, indicators and benchmarks, and budget analysis - to analyze government performance, guide legislative reforms and build social movements for economic justice. In the past, Gillian has advised UNICEF, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health and Rights & Democracy, among others, on developing such human rights tools.  Current projects in this area include: 

• Health Care is a Human Rights Campaign: A Project with the Vermont Workers' Center
  Mariah McGill, PHRGE Ford Foundation Fellow, is documenting the history of the Vermont Workers' Center Campaign on health care as a human right. This two-year campaign achieved amazing results in May 2010 when the Vermont Legislature adopted a bill requiring the state to enact a universal health care system based on human rights principles. Mariah is exploring how the Center used a human rights framework to build a grassroots movement for universal health care.

• Human Rights Budget Project: A Project with the Vermont Workers' Center and the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative
  Gillian MacNaughton is working with the Vermont Workers' Center and the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative on a pilot project to use a human rights framework to analyze state budgets. This new project follows on the heels of the successful Health Care is a Human Right Campaign on which she also advised during the 2010 legislative session.

• Towards Closing the Inequitable Drug Gap: Validating and Implementing a Right to Health Impact Assessment of Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC)
  Gillian MacNaughton (co-investigator) is collaborating on a research project with Lisa Forman, University of Toronto (principal investigator), Aboubakry Gollock, Ronald Labonte, (co-investigators), Godelieve van Heteren (collaborator). The project is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. It aims to develop and pilot in two countries (Thailand and Peru) a human rights impact assessment tool that can be used to assess the impact of trade law on the availability of medicines in low and middle income countries.

Publications

Mariah McGill, “Everybody In, Nobody Out: Vermont’s New Plan for Universal Health care” Clearinghouse Review: Journal of Poverty Law and Policy, Special Issue on Human Rights. (Forthcoming 2011)

Gillian MacNaughton “The Right to Health Care in the United States” Clearinghouse Review: Journal of Poverty Law and Policy, Special Issue on Human Rights (Forthcoming 2011)

Gillian MacNaughton, "A Human Rights-Based Approach to Social Impact Assessment," co-author Paul Hunt, chapter in New Directions in Social Impact Assessment: Conceptual and Methodological Advances edited by Frank Vanclay & Ana Maria Esteves, Edward Elgar Publishing (Forthcoming 2011).

Gillian MacNaughton, "Human Rights Frameworks, Strategies and Tools for the Poverty Lawyer's Toolbox," 44 Clearinghouse Review: Journal of Poverty Law and Policy 437 (January/February 2011).

Gillian MacNaughton, "Health Impact Assessment: The Contribution of the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health," co-author Paul Hunt, 123 Public Health 302 (2009).

Gillian MacNaughton, "A Human Rights-Based Approach to Health Indicators," co-author Paul Hunt, chapter in Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Action edited by Mashood Baderin & Robert McCorquodale, Oxford University Press (2007).

Gillian MacNaughton, "Impact Assessments, Poverty and Human Rights: A Case Study Using the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health," co-author Paul Hunt, Health and Human Rights Working Paper Series No 6, World Health Organization and UNESCO (2006).

Mariah McGill, "The Human Right to Health Care in the State of Vermont", Vermont Bar Journal, (Forthcoming: 2011.)

Mariah McGill, Vermont Health Campaign Success, IntLawGrrls, May 8, 2011.

Mariah McGill, Vermont Reform and the Human Right to Health, IntLawGrrls  February 19, 2011.  

Mariah McGill, "Using Human Rights to Move Beyond the Politically Possible" 44 Clearinghouse Review: Journal of Poverty Law and Policy 459 (2011) http://www.povertylaw.org/clearinghouse-review

Presentations:

Gillian MacNaughton, “Mainstreaming Human Rights into Impact Assessment” paper presented, Annual Conference of the International Association of Impact Assessment, 28 May - 4 June 2011, Puebla, Mexico.

Gillian MacNaughton, “Human Rights Toolkit” Session on the Human Rights Track, panelist invited by Maryland Legal Aid Bureau, “Partners for Justice” Symposium hosted by the Maryland Pro Bono Resource Center, Baltimore Convention Center, May 26, 2011.

Gillian MacNaughton, “The Peru Health Impact Assessment 2005: A Case Study” workshop presentation, “Toward Closing the Inequitable Drug Gap: Validating and Implementing a Right to Health Impact Assessment Tool of Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights in Low and Middle Income Countries” Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, 5-6 May 2011.

Gillian MacNaughton, “New Tools and Techniques: Focus on Indicators and Impact Assessment,” invited speaker, workshop at the Symposium on “The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard ofHealth: Looking Back and Moving Forward,” British Medical Association, London, 25-27 Sept 2008.