The Future of Human Rights in WHO

This chapter examines how the Sustainable Development Agenda—with its focus on equity, gender equality, and human rights—has provided an unprecedented opportunity to advance human rights within the World Health Organization (WHO). It looks at how human rights are increasingly permeating the Organization’s work, both implicitly and explicitly, and how this paves the way for a bolder vision for human rights in health. Through this examination, the authors lay out a strategy for three necessary shifts that would set WHO on an unprecedented path toward greater rights-based health governance: the adoption of a Resolution by WHO’s governing body on health, both as a human right and as a means to achieve human rights (“to health and through health”); greater collaboration between WHO and the UN human rights system to promote rights-based approaches to health; and building evidence of the impact of such approaches on health.