Drafts by Sharifah Sekalala
Mapping the harms to caregivers during global health emergencies , 2019
This article focuses on the ‘recognition’ of care-workers within global health crises. Global hea... more This article focuses on the ‘recognition’ of care-workers within global health crises. Global health crises often occur in parts of the world that have weak health infrastructure and a lack of human resources. When emergencies occur, the issue of who provides care is often ignored because very often global health crises are securitized which leads to narratives of ‘front-line workers’, who are often narrowly determined. As part of a wider socio-legal project on global health crises, this paper develops a case study of the Ebola crisis both in the West Africa in 2014 and the current on-going crisis in the DRC in order to map which care-givers we should conceive of as being on the front-line, what role gender plays in exacerbating the harm they face during and after the health crisis and how human rights would enable us to better understand our global responsibilities towards them? The paper analyses four categories of care workers who have been active in global health emergencies: health workers from international humanitarian organisations, medical professionals from the local area, volunteers such as Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene ( WASH ) staff or burial teams who bury bodies, and family members who assumed unpaid caring responsibilities.
In this article, I illustrate how all four categories of people have been subject to gendered harm due to contagion. Building on the work of Harman, (2016) Davies and Bennet (2018) who found an absence of gender concerns in global policy making during global health crises, I will focus on how the gendered nature of health crises impacts on social reproduction and how a human rights approach can mitigate this. Besides contagion, carers often face physical, emotional and psychological distress of caring for a disease with extremely high rates of mortality and the separation from families due to quarantine. They also face economic hardship and stigmatisation when the crisis ends. In addition to illustrating these different dimension of harm, I will argue that the different legal status of these care-workers creates varying levels of vulnerability and a human rights approach would be critical to enabling us to have a better recognition of the true the cost of caring in global health crises.
Papers by Sharifah Sekalala
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jul 15, 2020
Australian Journal of International Affairs, Jan 2, 2022
ABSTRACT This article examines how the ‘health security’ paradigm positions health-related human ... more ABSTRACT This article examines how the ‘health security’ paradigm positions health-related human rights as subordinate to national security concerns. As a consequence, health is viewed instrumentally, shifting the global health response towards maintaining national security rather than upholding human rights. We trace here how both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Security Council have approached global health crises, evolving across infectious disease responses to HIV/AIDS, SARS, Ebola and COVID-19. While the Security Council has come to address human rights in select public health contexts, we see that the securitisation of human rights in times of crisis can pose severe limits on individual rights, failing to develop global health solidarity through a commitment to broader health objectives such as Universal Health Coverage. We conclude that the Security Council and the WHO should collaborate towards a rights-based response to COVID-19 that prioritises individual human rights alongside national security concerns, addressing underlying inequities in the global response to infectious disease.
npj Digital Medicine
The retention and use of health-related data by government, corporate, and health professional ac... more The retention and use of health-related data by government, corporate, and health professional actors risk exacerbating the harms of colonial systems of inequality in which health care and public health are situated, regardless of the intentions about how those data are used. In this context, a data justice perspective presents opportunities to develop new norms of health-related data governance that hold health justice as the primary objective. In this perspective, we define the concept of health data justice, outline urgent issues informed by this approach, and propose five calls to action from a health data justice perspective.
Foundations of Global Health & Human Rights
This chapter examines the influence of human rights in the quest to control communicable diseases... more This chapter examines the influence of human rights in the quest to control communicable diseases. Communicable diseases are emerging and spreading faster than ever before, with devastating consequences for the most vulnerable in a rapidly globalizing world. Human rights have come to frame infectious disease control, beginning in the early response to AIDS and expanding from the stigmatization of marginalized populations to include the provision of essential medicines. Human rights claims have correspondingly expanded, arising out of norms of non-discrimination, consent, and privacy and now including the right to health. As individual rights compete with state authority, the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) International Health Regulations (2005) aim to guide states in a rights-based response to communicable disease. However, as seen in recent Ebola outbreaks, human rights have lost priority to health security as the dominant frame for health policy, and this securitization of co...
Hague Journal on the Rule of Law, 2015
There has been a marked rise in new organisations such as public private partnerships (PPPs) with... more There has been a marked rise in new organisations such as public private partnerships (PPPs) within the global health sector, of which The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) is perhaps one the most well-known. From its conception, it was hailed as a new breed of international institution which would be less bureaucratic, more transparent and more accountable to its stakeholders. However, the GFATM has unfortunately been plagued by corruption in its operations in several developing countries. In this note, we draw on case studies of GFATM experiences of corruption in Uganda and Zambia to argue that we should be cautious in welcoming this new form of global governance in regard to its ability to ensure transparency and accountability. This is because one of the key strengths of the PPP structure, is that it creates autonomy at the national level, which constitutes a weakness when there is corruption. Indeed, despite evidence of widespread corruption in the GFATM in both of our case study countries, the GFATM has been unable to effect successful prosecution of the culprits and recover money that has been siphoned off, as both the Ugandan and the Zambian governments have exhibited a lack of political will.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013
Reproductive Health
Background Sexual and reproductive health and rights are critical entitlements best supported thr... more Background Sexual and reproductive health and rights are critical entitlements best supported through human rights-based approaches empowering rights-holders to claim their rights and duty bearers to fulfil their obligations. Implementing these requires information on the current needs and challenges faced by those seeking to claim their sexual and reproductive health and rights. We aimed to identify the underlying factors influencing the realisation of sexual and reproductive health and rights for adolescent girls and young women living Ugandan slums by: (1) exploring the role of relevant service providers and stakeholders; and (2) uncovering knowledge and gaps in protecting adolescent girls’ and young women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights. Methods Qualitative data were collected through focus groups and interviews focused on current knowledge, behaviours and attitudes towards sexual and reproductive health and rights among adolescent girls and young women, service prov...
Health and Human Rights, 2021
A critical debate in the race to develop, market, and distribute COVID-19 vaccines could define t... more A critical debate in the race to develop, market, and distribute COVID-19 vaccines could define the future of this pandemic: How much evidence demonstrating a vaccine’s safety and efficacy should be required before it is considered “essential”? If a COVID-19 vaccine were to be designated an essential medicine by the World Health Organization, this would invoke special “core” human rights duties for governments to provide the vaccine as a matter of priority irrespective of resource constraints. States would also have duties to make the vaccine available in adequate amounts, in the appropriate dosage forms, with assured quality and adequate information, and at an affordable price. This question is especially critical and unique given that COVID-19 vaccines have in many cases been authorized for use via national emergency use authorization processes—mechanisms that enable the public to gain access to promising medical products before they have received full regulatory approval and lice...
International Journal of Noncommunicable Diseases
The Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is one of the most compelling public health crises... more The Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is one of the most compelling public health crises of modern times and the longterm evolution of the epidemic remains uncertain. This is because there is no cure for the malady. Many people are living with HIV/AIDS. At the end of 2007, they were estimated at 33.2 million. The number of people with HIV has continued to rise with Africa remaining the global epicentre. Vulnerable groups have been hardest hit by the epidemic. 75 per cent of young women aged between 1524 years live with HIV/AIDS in subSaharan Africa and this trend is on the rise in other regions where females represent an increasing proportion of people with HIV/AIDS. HIV/AIDS related diseases account for 500 million or more illnesses and 6 million deaths every year.
Reproductive Health, 2021
Background Sexual and reproductive health and rights are critical entitlements best supported thr... more Background Sexual and reproductive health and rights are critical entitlements best supported through human rights-based approaches empowering rights-holders to claim their rights and duty bearers to fulfil their obligations. Implementing these requires information on the current needs and challenges faced by those seeking to claim their sexual and reproductive health and rights. We aimed to identify the underlying factors influencing the realisation of sexual and reproductive health and rights for adolescent girls and young women living Ugandan slums by: (1) exploring the role of relevant service providers and stakeholders; and (2) uncovering knowledge and gaps in protecting adolescent girls’ and young women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights. Methods Qualitative data were collected through focus groups and interviews focused on current knowledge, behaviours and attitudes towards sexual and reproductive health and rights among adolescent girls and young women, service prov...
REF Compliant by Deposit in other institution's Repository: Kent's repository on 02/05/20... more REF Compliant by Deposit in other institution's Repository: Kent's repository on 02/05/2018: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/66268/
The COVID-19 pandemic has led policy makers to expand traditional public health surveillance to t... more The COVID-19 pandemic has led policy makers to expand traditional public health surveillance to take advantage of new technologies, such as tracking apps, to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2. This article explores the human rights dimensions of how these new surveillance technologies are being used and assesses the extent to which they entail legitimate restrictions to a range of human rights, including the rights to health, life, and privacy. We argue that human rights offer a crucial framework for protecting the public from regulatory overreach by ensuring that digital health surveillance does not undermine fundamental features of democratic society. First, we describe the surveillance technologies being used to address COVID-19 and reposition these technologies within the evolution of public health surveillance tools and the emergence of discussions concerning the compatibility of such tools with human rights. We then evaluate the potential human rights implications of the survei...
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Drafts by Sharifah Sekalala
In this article, I illustrate how all four categories of people have been subject to gendered harm due to contagion. Building on the work of Harman, (2016) Davies and Bennet (2018) who found an absence of gender concerns in global policy making during global health crises, I will focus on how the gendered nature of health crises impacts on social reproduction and how a human rights approach can mitigate this. Besides contagion, carers often face physical, emotional and psychological distress of caring for a disease with extremely high rates of mortality and the separation from families due to quarantine. They also face economic hardship and stigmatisation when the crisis ends. In addition to illustrating these different dimension of harm, I will argue that the different legal status of these care-workers creates varying levels of vulnerability and a human rights approach would be critical to enabling us to have a better recognition of the true the cost of caring in global health crises.
Papers by Sharifah Sekalala
In this article, I illustrate how all four categories of people have been subject to gendered harm due to contagion. Building on the work of Harman, (2016) Davies and Bennet (2018) who found an absence of gender concerns in global policy making during global health crises, I will focus on how the gendered nature of health crises impacts on social reproduction and how a human rights approach can mitigate this. Besides contagion, carers often face physical, emotional and psychological distress of caring for a disease with extremely high rates of mortality and the separation from families due to quarantine. They also face economic hardship and stigmatisation when the crisis ends. In addition to illustrating these different dimension of harm, I will argue that the different legal status of these care-workers creates varying levels of vulnerability and a human rights approach would be critical to enabling us to have a better recognition of the true the cost of caring in global health crises.