Right to Health
The UN Special Rapporteur for mental and physical health, Ms. Tlaleng Mofokeng, laid out her objectives very clearly on Day 4 of the Human Rights Council 47th session,
“We must save all humans everywhere”.
Ms. Mofokeng, is a medical doctor from South Africa, who’s appointment in July 2020 came in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic. She explained that “the pandemic has had an impact on every single right to health entitlement” and highlighted the right to health is inclusive and interconnected in her report 47/28.
However, as the virus has so brutally exposed, it is the underlying determinants of health that can impact the ability to fight the disease, Ms. Mofokeng identified these rights as exclusive,
“they include an adequate supply of safe food nutrition and housing, access to safe potable water and sanitation, healthy occupational and environmental conditions, and access to health related education and information.”
As nations race to vaccinate their citizens, Ms. Mofokeng used the platform to remind the assembled representatives that the right to health is interdependent, “it will require global solidarity and equity in accessing essential medicines, including the COVID-19 vaccine” She went on to suggest that
“successful vaccine programmes in a few countries with millions of without essential medicines will be short lived, we must guard against militarization politicisation of the pandemic and recommend moving away from turning access to vaccine to act of charity and philanthropy and forward to the opportunity to cooperate”
UNICEF was one of the many respondents to the presentation noting:
“the COVID-19 crisis has reminded [us] that the realisation of the rights is interdependent indivisible and interrelated with other human rights [and] requires global solidarity and equity and accessing essential medicines, including vaccines”
While Brazil welcomed the priority on COVID-19 and said they would welcome “ recommendations on how to ensure access to medicines and vaccines diagnostics and therapeutics”. Brazil also reflected one of the central themes of HRC47 by reaffirming their commitment “to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights to health, for women and girls.”
The Special Rapporteur has a background in advocating for universal health access, HIV care, youth-friendly services and family planning and she returned to these some of these themes in her report presentation describing an agenda of “innovation, digital technology and interventions in the telehealth space” to support “ sexual and reproductive health rights, racism and the right to health, health equity and health financing” She urged states to adopt,
“ a comprehensive gender sensitive and non discriminatory sexual and reproductive health policies for all adolescents “ to recognise that “unequal access, especially by adolescents, constitutes discrimination”
Finally the Special Rapporteur promised to use her mandate to “focus on healthcare workers as they are essential to ensure availability, accessibility and the quality of healthcare services”
Right to Education
The Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Dr. Koumbou Boly Barry, presented her thematic report on the cultural dimensions of the right to education, or the right to education as a cultural right, which was first published in April 2021. The report highlights that the cultural dimensions of the right to education are crucial to realizing SDG 4, which calls for the universal right to inclusive and quality education. Dr. Boly Barry started by stressing that the right to education should be viewed as a cultural right because
“the right to education is the right of every person to have access to the cultural resources needed to freely develop their own process of identification.”
This approach is the basis of the report, which calls for making the most out of cultural resources, for the participation of all actors, including students, educators and organizations and decentralisation in favour of more autonomy for local actors. The Special Rapporteur acknowledged that the current lack of cultural relevance of educational systems and overly centralized education systems are one of the main obstacles to the overarching goal of leaving no one behind. Education systems being poorly tailored to the needs of multicultural societies creates a hierarchy among cultures worldviews, which perpetuates discrimination exclusion and segregation. Therefore, the Special Rapporteur pronounced that
“the challenge is to offer inclusive high quality education that allows cultural diversity and the cultural rights of each person to thrive.”
Instead of looking into the educational rights of individual groups, such as minorities, indigenous people, migrants, persons with disabilities, women or children, the report sets out the main principles and plans of actions that enable everyone, regardless of their background and identity, to access high quality education and training.
One of the first steps is to ensure the capacity of education system stakeholders to adapt to the diversity of resources, to be enriched by these cultural resources, and the capacity to include people and resources in educational life. The report urges states and relevant actors to recognize that cultural diversity is a fundamental characteristic of our societies that must be reflected and made use of in education systems.
In its response to the Special Rapporteur, China recognised the importance of the cultural dimension of the right to education and, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, asked other countries to
“lend the greatest support to developing countries in education resources, especially digital transformation capacity to eliminate inequalities.”
China also expressed its concern of “systematic racial discrimination against African and Asian descendants in education resources allocation”, which impedes their enjoyment of education rights. Nevertheless, the country is at the forefront of targeting minorities.
In the northwest Xinjiang region, the use of the Uyghur language has been banned at all educational levels in favour of Mandarin Chinese. Moreover, Mongolian is increasingly being replaced as well. Last year, all elementary and middle schools in Inner Mongolia were instructed to only use Mandarin Chinese for three subjects. However, China responded to the report, that lists China as one of the countries that prohibit or severely restrict the use of a minority mother tongue in education, with denial:
“China is shocked. [This] is completely untrue. China’s laws provide for respect and guarantee of ethnic minorities’ rights to receive education in their languages and scripts.”
Finally, the Special Rapporteur reiterated the obligations of states to prioritise high quality public education free of charge, to regulate the participation of the private sector in education and the general need for cultural diversity. Cultural diversity needs to be utilized as the asset it is, rather than being treated as an obstacle to overcome. To strengthen the cultural dimension of education, a holistic approach should be adopted at all levels of education, from early childhood to university through non-formal education.