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1. Untangling the Web: A Blueprint for Reforming American Security Sector Assistance

Author:
Rose Jackson
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Open Society Foundations
Abstract:
Since the attacks of 9/11, the United States has spent more than $250 billion building up military and police forces around the world. From attempts to build whole armies in Iraq and Afghanistan to efforts to help Yemen or Nigeria fight terrorism, the impact of these efforts has been mixed and in some cases counterproductive, exacerbating local corruption, human rights abuses, and even terrorism. A knot of U.S. offices and agencies have evolved to provide this aid, mostly pulling in different directions. Untangling the Web: A Blueprint for Reforming American Security Sector Assistance describes the main failures in the system and sets out immediate steps the next administration can take to improve how the U.S. government plans, coordinates, and executes its security-related assistance. This would significantly increase transparency and accountability and link the aid more closely to the human rights, development, and governance outcomes that are essential to U.S. foreign policy interests and national security.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, National Security, Terrorism, War, International Security, Military Affairs, Counter-terrorism, and Grand Strategy
Political Geography:
Middle East and Global Focus

2. License to Be Yourself

Publication Date:
05-2014
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Open Society Foundations
Abstract:
When trans people’s passports, driver licenses, and national ID cards, do not reflect their gender identity, it can exclude them from fundamental aspects of daily life—like receiving health care, schooling, housing, or a bank account. And it can prevent trans people from exercising basic liberties like the right to vote or freedom of movement. The vast majority of trans people around the world cannot obtain official documents under their appropriate name and sex that match their gender identity. Where this is possible, trans people often face highly restrictive laws or regulations for changing name and sex that violate human rights obligations. These restrictions may involve excluding trans people who are married or have children, or require compulsory medical diagnoses or proceedures, including those that result in sterilization. License to Be Yourself documents some of the world’s most progressive and rights-based laws and policies that enable trans people to change their gender identity on official documents. It shares strategies that activists have successfully used in a variety of global and legal contexts, and features case studies from Argentina, Australia, Hong Kong, Kenya, Ukraine, and the United States. This report is a resource for activists working on human rights issues for trans people, local communities examining best laws and policies, and policymakers seeking to uphold the rights of trans people.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Human Rights, LGBT+, Sexuality, Identity, Legal Sector, and Transgender
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Transforming Health: International Rights-Based Advocacy for Trans Health

Publication Date:
02-2013
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Open Society Foundations
Abstract:
Trans people across the world face substantial barriers to adequate health and health care. They are targets of discrimination and violence, are at greater risk of contracting HIV, and experience a higher incidence of mental health problems like depression. They face discrimination from health care providers, a lack of doctors trained to address their needs, and the refusal of many national health systems and insurance providers to cover their care. Yet trans communities are building alliances to promote trans health and to fight for policies that respect gender diversity and human rights. This report profiles projects from 16 organizations in twelve countries that address these barriers. These projects offered general health services as well as those related to gender transition, trained health care providers to respond to the needs and concerns of trans patients, conducted public education campaigns about discrimination against trans people, advocated for legal and medical policy changes, and organized trans communities to empower themselves. Collecting insights from these projects, Transforming Health makes recommendations to governments, rights advocates, health professionals and public health organizations, and health and rights donors.
Topic:
HIV/AIDS, Gender Issues, Health, Discrimination, LGBT+, Public Health, Sexual Health, and Transgender
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. Twenty Mechanisms for Addressing Torture in Health Care

Author:
Jonathan Cohen and Tamar Ezer
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Open Society Foundations
Abstract:
Health care settings should be places where human rights are realized. Yet, across the world, health systems often serve as venues of punishment, coercion, and violations of basic human rights, sometimes amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. This abuse is especially prevalent in the care of socially marginalized groups—people living with HIV, ethnic minorities, sexual and gender minorities, people who use drugs, and people with intellectual disabilities or mental health problems. There are many national, regional, and international mechanisms designed to promote government accountability and prevent torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, yet these mechanisms are rarely applied to health facilities. This manual describes 20 anti-torture mechanisms from the United Nations and African, European, and Inter-American human rights systems and provides illustrative examples on how to use these mechanisms to fight torture in health settings. For each mechanism, the manual explores mandate, procedure, possibilities for engagement, and prior work on torture in health care. The manual also includes a glossary of basic human rights terms. This manual is designed as a resource for organizations that advocate against abuse in health care—including international, regional, and national human rights organizations; groups focused on particular health care abuses; anti-torture groups; and the treaty bodies themselves.
Topic:
HIV/AIDS, Health, Torture, United Nations, Minorities, and Health Care Policy
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, and Global Focus

5. Tools for Change: Applying United Nations standards to secure women’s housing, land, and property rights in the context of HIV

Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Open Society Foundations
Abstract:
Developed by the United Nations Development Programme and Open Society Foundations, Tools for Change is an easy-to-use resource for advocates working on women’s housing, land, and property rights in the context of HIV. It brings together relevant international human rights documents and highlights core concepts, rights, and means of enforcement, providing examples of successful advocacy from around the world. Moreover, it draws on the voices of women worldwide to explain these rights and their uses in practical terms. This manual was originally conceived during a strategic meeting on property and inheritance rights as they relate to HIV, held during the 2009 United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, where organizations gathered from around the world. It emerged from the realization that through hard work, advocates have managed to get a number of UN instruments to include protection for women’s housing, land, and property rights, and member states have pledged to abide by them. However, many advocates at the national level do not even know of these international instruments, even though they might be helpful in their work, particularly as governments may not be meeting their international human rights obligations. Advocates need a better understanding of international human rights and government obligations in order to ensure government accountability and advance women’s housing, land, and property rights. This manual seeks to empower advocates working in the context of HIV by making the relevant United Nations standards and interpretations clear and accessible—to make them "tools for change."
Topic:
HIV/AIDS, United Nations, Women, Land, Housing, and Equality
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. Mapping Digital Media: Online Media and Defamation

Author:
Toby Mendel
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Open Society Foundations
Abstract:
The internet is fantastically enabling for the news media, creating previously unimagined possibilities in terms of distribution, audience interaction, and archiving. But it also presents new threats, such as in the area of defamation law, already a significant problem for many media outlets. This paper assesses these problems against international guarantees of freedom of expression and comparative national practice, through both law and self-regulation, highlighting solutions that are more protective of free expression, as well as those that are not. It also probes new ideas such as greater reliance on the right of reply—which the internet enables—and the notion that some spaces on the Internet should be protected against any defamation liability.
Topic:
Communications, Law, Regulation, Media, News Analysis, and Digital Policy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. Treatment or Torture? Applying International Human Rights Standards to Drug Detention Centers

Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Open Society Foundations
Abstract:
People identified as drug users in many countries are confined to abusive locked detention centers for months or even years. Such detention centers are supposedly mandated to treat and "rehabilitate" drug users, but the "treatment" they receive in some cases amounts to torture or other cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment. In Treatment or Torture? Applying International Human Rights Standards to Drug Detention Centers, legal experts review common forms of abuse in drug detention centers and show how these practices in many cases are in violation of basic human rights treaties widely ratified by most nations worldwide. International health and drug-control agencies—including the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, UNAIDS, and the World Health Organization—all endorse comprehensive, evidence-based drug dependence treatment services. Yet drug detention centers rarely provide treatment that meets these standards. Depending on the country, so-called rehabilitation consists of a regime of military drills, forced labor, psychological and moral re-education, and shackling, caning, and beating. Treatment or Torture? comes in advance of the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking and the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture—both on June 26, 2011. The report was published by the Campaign to Stop Torture in Health Care, a coalition led by the Open Society Foundations, and featured legal analysis by Human Rights Watch, Harm Reduction International, and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.
Topic:
Health, Human Rights, International Law, War on Drugs, Health Care Policy, Criminal Justice, Drugs, and Public Health
Political Geography:
Global Focus

8. The Role of Human Rights in Ensuring Universal Access to HIV Testing and Counselling

Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Open Society Foundations
Abstract:
Recent years have seen a significant expansion of HIV testing and counselling, a necessary pre-condition for achieving the goal of universal access to comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, care, and support. However, HIV testing and counselling is not implemented fully and correctly unless human rights approaches are integrated into all aspects of its delivery. This includes not only respect for the "three C's" of pre-test information or counselling and post-test counselling, informed and voluntary consent to testing, and confidentiality of test results, but also ensuring an enabling environment that protects people from discrimination, violence, abandonment, ostracism, and other potential negative consequences of a positive test result. On October 12-13, the Open Society Public Health Program, the Secretariat of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS Secretariat), and the World Health Organization cosponsored the meeting, “The Role of Human Rights in Ensuring Universal Access to HIV Testing and Counselling." The purpose of the meeting was to bridge the gap between international guidance on HIV testing and counselling and the implementation of this guidance. The meeting participants represented a wide variety of constituencies, including people living with and affected by HIV, implementers of HIV testing programs, donors and representatives of multilateral agencies, researchers, and human rights advocates. They sought to reach a consensus on concrete strategies and specific activities to overcome two types of barriers to ensuring human rights in the practice of HIV testing and counselling: political/systemic barriers and technical barriers.
Topic:
HIV/AIDS, Health, Human Rights, Health Care Policy, Multilateralism, Advocacy, and Public Health
Political Geography:
Global Focus

9. At What Cost? HIV and Human Rights Consequences of the Global "War on Drugs"

Publication Date:
03-2009
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Open Society Foundations
Abstract:
A decade after governments worldwide pledged to achieve a "drug-free world," there is little evidence that the supply or demand of illicit drugs has been reduced. Instead, aggressive drug control policies have led to increased incarceration for minor offenses, human rights violations, and disease. This book examines the descent of the global war on drugs into a war on people who use drugs. From Puerto Rico to Phnom Penh, Manipur to Moscow, the scars of this war are carried on the bodies and minds of drug users, their families, and the health and service providers who work with them.
Topic:
Health, War on Drugs, and Drugs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

10. Closed to Reason: The International Narcotics Board and HIV/AIDS

Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Open Society Foundations
Abstract:
In this report on the International Narcotics Control Board—a secretive UN-funded body responsible for monitoring compliance with the UN drug conventions—Daniel Wolfe, OSI International Harm Reduction Development Deputy Director, and Joanne Csete, Executive Director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, detail the ways in which the Board rejects scientific evidence and expert legal analyses, praises governments that violate human rights, and stresses drug control at the expense of public health, blocking evidence-based efforts to address the epidemic of HIV among injecting drug users. Closed to Reason offers recommendations to increase the Board's accountability and transparency and to make it an effective part of the international response to HIV/AIDS.
Topic:
HIV/AIDS, Health, United Nations, Narcotics Trafficking, and Legal Sector
Political Geography:
Global Focus