National & International Responsibilities allocation + dialogue with governments requiring assistance

 

Objectives

  • Assess how national and international responsibilities for health have been allocated (or not) in treaties and non-binding international instruments (e.g., declarations, resolutions), in constitutions, in case law (mostly about national responsibility), in previous international efforts to improve health, and in relevant literature.
  • Assess real and perceived “constraints of developing countries for improving health outcomes themselves” (as mentioned in topic), with a particular focus on national financing capacity, but also on affordability of medicines, availability of human resources, and right to health shortcomings in such areas as equity, participation, and accountability.
  • Identify gaps in MDG process.
  • Examine the development and definition of the minimum core concept in international human rights law, including through reviews of international human rights law and policy, literature reviews, and interviews with key drafters of the Maastricht Principles and General Comment 14 on the right to health.
  • Identify weaknesses in present practice of international assistance, in terms of volume and longer term reliability of international assistance, its contributions to greater equity, accountability of international assistance to local populations, and inclusive country ownership including participation of communities and marginalized populations in determining uses of assistance.
  • Identify weaknesses and gaps in present national practices to improve health equity, ensuring the accountability of health services to populations, and inclusive participatory processes in developing, monitoring, and evaluating health policies and practices.
  • Compare EHNs as developed in WP2 with costing estimates that have already been made, trying to affirm or infirm the validity of these estimates.
  • Determine domestic health funding targets consistent with the right to health and its requirement to expend the maximum of available resources towards economic, social, and cultural rights, while avoiding taxation levels that would further impoverish already poor people.
  • Determine international health funding targets that will ensure universal health coverage for all people.
  • Determine obligations with respect to equity, participation, and accountability in national and international health policies, processes, and funding.
  • Provide a conceptual framework for applying the principle of shared responsibilities as formulated in the Millennium Declaration on complex issues like health innovation (responsibility for encouraging and rewarding the development of medicines most needed by the communities whose health is most affected) and migration of health workers (responsibility for training and retaining health workers, and possibly compensation).

Tasks

  • Review of literature on national and international responsibilities, to contribute to mapping gaps and tensions in progress towards UHC, including findings from WP1, WP2, and WP4.
  • Contribution to first draft agreement on NHDGs and supportive global social contract.
  • Obtaining feedback from governments of countries requiring assistance on first draft agreement on NHDGs and supportive global social contract.
  • Contribute to writing of second draft of agreement on NHDGs and supportive global social contract.
  • Dialogue with governments requiring assistance on priorities for implementation.