RGH Video Blog – The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
Click here to access the Convention on the Rights of the Child
Click here to access the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
Hello and welcome to the Global Health Video Class. My name is Dr. Elvira Beracochea and I am the president and CEO of Realizing Global Health. You can find us at https://www.realizingglobalhealth.com. We are a global health consultant company dedicated to creating self-reliant, sustainable health systems that meet the quality standards for every patient everywhere every day.
If you want to know more about human rights today, that is the topic! We are continuing our discussion of rights-based approaches to public health, what they mean in global health and how we can really advance the agenda. We talked about how the agenda of the millennium development goals – which is not yet finished – is being translated into sustainable goals. We are going from the MDGs to the SDGs. By looking at the international legislation in human rights, how can we advance what we do? We are living in an amazing time because we have the technology plus the medical/scientific knowledge to save millions of lives and treat or prevent most of the conditions that affect our species. So it is important that we look for ways in which we can really translate and deliver that knowledge, that medical care to everyone everywhere every day.
No one should die from a preventable condition in the 21st century. That should be completely unacceptable because that means that we haven’t been smart enough to figure out a way to make it happen and deliver it to everyone. Now, we really have the technology to make it happen. If we just make a little shift- and that shift is looking at the international legislation on human rights. We talked about the right to development and the right to health in previous videos. Today, I want to talk about two very important legislations that I believe every health professional should be very, very familiar with: the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
The Convention on the Rights of the Child is a short document- only about 40 articles in length. Again, print it out, read it and then read it aloud with your whole team. Then, think about how you, as a health professional, can advance what you do every day to help meet the rights of every child in your community. Every patient that comes in, every child that is born in your community, has to be part of your denominator – that means you have that as the target population you have to reach and to work with others. No one says you have to work on this alone! Work with others to make sure that the rights of every child are being respected, fulfilled and protected.
The Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women is another important piece of international legislation. It is a brief document – only about ten pages long. We know that MDG 5 about Maternal Health is the millennium development goal that is far behind the other goals. We know that the quality of healthcare that women get is not up to the standards that we know are necessary to save a woman’s life. How is that we still have hundreds of thousands of women die in pregnancy or delivery in this century? It is unacceptable. No one should die in pregnancy or delivery in this century. That is discrimination against women. We need to make sure that women as human beings have the same rights and access to quality healthcare that meets our needs.
I want to make sure you read the CEDAW and think about what you can achieve in 2015 that will help with this effort. Make another little shift that will help you apply at least one or two aspects of the CEDAW in your work. We do this because everything we do impacts the right to health of every human being: child, woman or man. We are all part of the same species and we all have the same rights. You as a health professional will do your share to make that human right a reality for everyone everywhere every day.
I hope that you continue with us through this series. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. I will be happy to answer all of your questions. Until then, I wish you a very successful 2015 in which we really advance human rights for everyone everywhere every day. See you next time!
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