Putting Human Rights at the Heart of the Response
Topic in Focus: COVID-19 and Women’s Human Rights
15 April 2020
Stay-at-home restrictions and other measures restricting the movement of people contribute to an increase in genderbased violen...ce, a finding confirmed by media reports, official statements and information received from OHCHR field presences and human rights defenders in many countries.
Women and girls already in abusive situations are more exposed to increased control and restrictions by their abusers, with little or no recourse to seek support. Hotlines receive reports of women being threatened with being thrown out of their homes, exposed to the infection, or having financial resources and medical aid withheld.
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The 2021 COVID-19 Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan (SPRP) for AFR serves as a regional guide for a holistic public health response to COVID‑19 at regional, national and sub-national levels. The 2021
SPRP:
1. Builds upon the lessons learnt from the implementation of the 2020 SPRP and outl...ines a regional preparedness, response and recovery strategy for COVID‑19.
2. Has been adapted to reflect the Regional context including COVID-19 vaccination. It also considers epidemiological changes and recommen-dations emerging from the evaluation report of the 2020 SPRP4.
3. Highlights to Member States strategic preparedness and response actions to be sustained at national and sub-national levels, as well as the critical inter-agency and partner support required.
4. provides the indicative resource requirements to reinforce WHO planned interventions in the African Region to enhance countries’ capacities to suppress transmission, save lives and mitigate the impact of the pandemic on people and health systems.
5. Provides a road map for mitigating potential resurgence in the Region as economies reopen and ensure country level continuity of other essential health services.
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The Social Cash Transfer Programme (SCTP)—locally known in Chichewa as Mtukula Pakhomo—is a non-conditional critical safety net for the most vulnerable, ultra-poor Malawians. By providing monthly cash transfers to over 1.3 million people annuall...y, this programme helps ultra-poor families to meet their basic needs and build resilience, with the ultimate goal of building human capital and moving them out of poverty.
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The United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, echoed the concerns of people and organisations around the world when he recently referred to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on schoolin...g as a
‘generational catastrophe’.
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People living with HIV depend on life-saving antiretroviral therapy (ART) and access to ART must be maintained during periods of travel restrictions and lockdowns resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Information note on HIV and COVID-19 address...es common concerns people living with HIV have regarding the risks of COVID-19 and how to minimize them. For HIV programme managers and health facilities providing HIV services, it identifies key points related to ensuring uninterrupted provision of ART, while protecting clients and staff from the risk of infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
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In the European Union, over 20 million people suffer from asthma. During the 1990s there was a rapid decrease in asthma mortality, probably related to the increased use of inhaled corticosteroids (I...CS). However, during the last decade, asthma mortality rates have plateaued, and a consistently high proportion of patients have uncontrolled asthma. As a result, many patients with asthma still have impaired quality of life and suffer from chronic respiratory symptoms, often including night-time symptoms, causing sleep disturbance, excessive daytime sleepiness and decreased work productivity.
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Policy Note #4: Myanmar Health Systems in Transition Policy Notes Series
Protecting people from financial hardship when they fall ill is one of the two key elements of universal health coverage... (UHC). In practice, this means that the majority of health care costs have to be met from government revenues so that services are provided free or with a small affordable co-payment. The alternative is to rely on pre-payment through some form of insurance, where risks are pooled across all contributors.
The challenge in Myanmar is that at present neither approach is functioning. Government spending is too low to meet people’s health needs and the proportion of the population covered by insurance is negligible. As a result, families face a stark choice in the event of serious illness: either defer treatment and face the consequences, or incur what can amount to catastrophic expenses and a downward spiral of disinvestment and poverty.
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Technical guidance.
This technical guidance aims to inform policy and practice development specifically related to improving the health of older refugees and migrants within the European Union and the larger WHO European Region. Both ageing and mig...ration are in themselves complex multidimensional processes shaped by a range of factors at the micro, meso and macro levels over the life-course of the individual, but also with intertwined trajectories. Relevant areas for policy-making include healthy ageing over the life-course, supportive environments, people-centred health and long-term care services, and strengthening the evidence base and research
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The number of people facing acute food insecurity1 is growing at an alarming rate in the European Union (EU) Member States of Central Eastern Europe. COVID-19 and the resulting disruption to global ...markets, trade, and food supply chains have negatively affected food security since 2020; now, this has been compounded by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Women and girls who have been displaced from Ukraine into Hungary are facing tremendous obstacles to their safety and wellbeing, particularly given the link between food insecurity and gender-based violence (GBV). Urgent policy responses and concrete actions are needed to support low-income households and vulnerable communities, particularly women and their families displaced from Ukraine, to stem this growing crisis.
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States have a moral and legal obligation—under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, human rights treaties, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and other international obligations—to remove discriminatory laws and to enact laws that... protect people from discrimination
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Climate change is already having severe impacts across our planet, bringing new and previously unimaginable challenges to the people least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions.
This report, t...he first we’ve released jointly in the history of our organizations, provides a sobering review of how just one of those challenges – the increase in deadly heat-waves – threatens to drive new emergency needs in the not-so-distant future.
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WRI develops practical solutions that improve people’s lives and ensure nature can thrive.
WRI have deep expertise in policy, research, data analysis, economics, political dynamics and more. WR...I work with partners in more than 50 countries and currently have offices in 12 countries: Brazil, China, Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.
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More than 20 million people in North-East Nigeria, South Sudan, Yemen and Somalia are facing famine or a credible risk of famine over the coming six
months. Some 1.4 million children are currently at imminent risk of death from malnutrition. To av...ert a major humanitarian catastrophe the United Nations and its partners must massively scale up efforts now. To do this, humanitarian operations in the four countries require more than US$5.6 billion in 2017, of which at least US$4.4 billion are required urgently.
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Protecting the fundamental rights of people affected by HIV
Under the Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (2008), every citizen - including ...medbox">people living with HIV - has the right to work, access health care, and receive basic education.
However, stigma and discrimination remains, preventing people living with HIV (PLHIV) from accessing health services, maintaining employment and receiving education – denying them of the fundamental rights that all Myanmar citizens are entitled to under the law.
No publication year indicated.
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The WHO/UNICEF JMP report, WASH in Health Care Facilities, is the first comprehensive global assessment of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in health care facilities. It also finds that 1 in 5 health care facilities has no sanitation service*, i...mpacting 1.5 billion people. The report further reveals that many health centres lack basic facilities for hand hygiene and safe segregation and disposal of health care waste.
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This month 600 people reached Greece, mostly to Lesvos island. UNHCR with IOM and UNICEF welcomed the latest relocations of 49 unaccompanied children from Greece to Portugal and Finland and called f...or more. The need for such solutions is high as only one in four has a place in a shelter. The premature end of accommodation assistance may lead recognized refugees to become homeless.
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This joint ECDC-European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) document aims to support Member States in determining a coordinated approach to reduce the risks related to the movement of people by air... within and between the EU/EEA countries and the UK in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that the impact of quarantine and testing is likely to vary according to levels of ongoing community transmission, and in the context of ECDC’s current advice that non-essential travel should be avoided during the end-of year festive period
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Nearly 260 000 people died in parts of Somalia between October 2010 and April 2012, including
133 000 children under five during the famine and food crisis in Somalia making it the worst famine in history.
A study commissioned and funded by the Fo...od and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation’s food security and nutrition analysis unit for Somalia stated that the famine early warning systems clearly identified the risk of famine in South Central Somalia in 2010–2011 but timely action to prevent the onset of famine was not taken. The result was large scale
mortality, morbidity and population displacement.
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All young people, including those with special needs and from the most vulnerable groups, have the right to quality health care services. Unfortunately, this right is not a reality, particularly in the case of sexual and reproductive health services.... Many youth in need of sexual and reproductive health care may either decline or be denied access to health services for a variety of reasons: Providers are often biased and do not feel comfortable serving youth who are sexually active; youth do not feel comfortable accessing existing services because they are not "youth-friendly" and may not meet their needs; and, often, community members do not feel that youth should have access to sexual and reproductive health services.
To address provider and site bias toward serving youth, EngenderHealth created a training curriculum intended to sensitize all staff at a health care facility on the provision of youth-friendly services. The curriculum was created as a result of the participatory work that we have been doing with youth in Nepal to address the needs of all levels of providers at different service-delivery settings. The curriculum has been field-tested and used in Nepal, Russia, Mongolia, and the United States.
Youth-Friendly Services allows staff to reflect upon and assess their own beliefs about adolescent sexuality while ensuring that those values and attitudes do not compromise the basic sexual and reproductive health rights to which youth are entitled. The curriculum also helps providers understand cross-cultural principles of adolescent development and health needs specific to youth. Once participant knowledge, attitudes, and skills are improved, sites conduct a self-assessment on the youth-friendliness of their services and create an action plan for specific improvements.
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As countries commit to achieving universal health coverage, it is imperative to ensure that the design and delivery of palliative care services place attention on quality of care, with action needed across all domains of quality health services: eff...ectiveness, safety, people-centredness, timeliness, equity, integration and efficiency. Providing compassionate, dignified and people-centred palliative care is an ethical responsibility of health systems.
This document provides a practical resource to support implementation of sustainable improvements in the quality of palliative care. It describes approaches to quality policy, strategy and planning for palliative care programmes and services, presents learning on quality of care arising from palliative care programmes, and offers considerations on measurement of quality palliative care services at all levels of the health system. The document also highlights relevant WHO resources available that further support the development of quality palliative care services.
The audience for this document is a general one that includes policy-makers, palliative care service planners, managers, practitioners and health care providers at all levels.
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