I appreciate Alexis Palmer and colleagues’ empirical research on the eff ects of ratifi cation of human rights treaties on population health (June 6, p 1987). Despite their conclusion that ratifi cation has no benefi ts on health, issues surrounding the eff ect of human rights norms within treaties are complex and might not be fully captured through an analysis of correlations between ratifi ca...

The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1961 aimed to eliminate the illicit production and non-medical use of cannabis, cocaine, and opioids, an aim later extended to many pharmaceutical drugs. Over the past 50 years international drug treaties have neither prevented the globalisation of the illicit production and non-medical use of these drugs, nor, outside of developed countries, made thes...

OBJECTIVES New Zealand has a unique tool, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Treaty of Waitangi, for addressing health disparities. Indigenous Māori have compromised health status compared to other groups. This paper investigates ways in which public health units (PHUs) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) use Te Tiriti o Waitangi in service delivery to Māori. DESIGN A nationwide telephone survey...

Public health instruments have been under constant development and renewal for decades. International legal instruments, with their binding character and strength, have a special place in this development. The start of the 21st century saw, in particular, the birth of the first World Health Organization (WHO)-era health treaties – the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) and i...

The World Health Organization and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (Nobel Peace Prize 1995) have been involved in questions concerning chemical and biological arms since the early 1950s. This memoir reviews a number of milestones in the efforts of these organizations to achieve the elimination of these weapons through international treaties effectively monitored and enforced...

Addressing the increasingly globalised determinants of many important problems affecting human health is a complex task requiring collective action. We suggest that part of the solution to addressing intractable global health issues indeed lies with the role of new legal instruments in the form of globally binding treaties, as described in the recent article of Nikogosian and Kickbusch. However...

BACKGROUND Undocumented migrants' access to health care varies across Europe, and entitlements on national levels are often at odds with the rights stated in international human rights law. The aim of this study is to address undocumented migrants' access to health care in Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands from a human rights perspective. METHODS Based on desk research in October 2011, we ...

BACKGROUND Most countries in the world have become States parties to one or more international human rights treaties, thus creating an obligation by the State to its people towards the realisation of the right to health, which includes access to essential medicines. But whether such access is enforceable in practice is unknown. METHODS We did a systematic search to identify completed court ca...

"Immigration is one of the more controversial areas in the history of European integration. Whilst northern European countries have been constructing elaborate compromises in the European Union (EU) Treaties and in the Schengen group, southern European countries have been trying to construct their own immigration policies. Little attention has been paid in the literature to the relationship bet...

M aternal and Child health is a global priority. Numerous treaties, initiatives and programmes have been formulated to try and improve the health and well-being of pregnant women and mothers and their children. The latest effort is the Millennium Development Goals that aim to inspire countries to drastically reduce maternal and child mortality and address specific disease and related challenges...