UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : OHCHR - Press Conference: Special Rapporteur on the right to health

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you very much for joining us at this press conference.

Today's briefing will be by the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, Doctor Thalang Mufuking.

Dr Mufuking just delivered her final report to the Human Rights Council focused on health as an enabler of human dignity, and we are very pleased to have her at the briefing here today.

We will begin with opening remarks by the Special Rapporteur and then take questions, talk them off.

OK, you have the floor.

Thank you very much for that introduction.

And indeed, this is my last press briefing as the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.

And it is my absolute pleasure to welcome this opportunity to speak to you today, especially after I've just presented my report entitled The Right to Health as an Enabler of Dignity to the 62nd Session of the Human Rights Council.

Dignity is inherent and equal worth of every human being.

It is not conditional on any status or achievement, but grounded in the fact that we are all human.

It's very important that this also includes our shared capacity to suffer, to depend on the empathy of others and to develop one's personality and life's plans.

I further asserted in my report that human rights systems are actually anchored in this very understanding of dignity.

When I was appointed as a Special Rapporteur in 2020, I set out in my strategic priorities of work that I would be adopting into racist and anti colonial analysis of the right to health and how we interrogate to the systems of power asymmetries the attainment of the right to health between and also within countries.

I identified dignity as a pivotal principle permeating the right to health and across my thematic work on sexual and productive health rights, harm reduction, racism as a structural determinant of health, digital technology, food and nutrition, mental health, as well as the rights of health and care workers as defenders of human rights.

I have identified recurring indignities including stigma, discrimination, criminalization, social exclusion as barriers to underlying determinants of health and often beyond interpersonal violence, structural and systemic violence as root causes of avoidable morbidity, mortality, and human suffering.

During this, Turnier also completed 5 country visits to the Maldives, Thailand, Chile, Luxembourg and Costa Rica.

And in all these countries there were successes and areas of good practises that I've reported in my reports to the Council on these country visits and once again wish to thank the Member States well in their endeavours to ensure the right to health is realised for all of their citizens.

As part of my remarks today, I just wanted to give some ways in which I think may be impactful and measurable and how we can operationalize dignity based approaches and remind us that equality and non discrimination are actually immediate obligations on member States.

So, in their endeavour to make sure that they protect, fulfil and realise the right to health, there are immediate and expeditious ways in which they can ensure that they truly leave no one behind.

One of the ways is to strengthen the conditions of dignified living by guaranteeing access to adequate housing, food and water, safe working conditions, social protection and education, and ensuring that health services are culturally safe, appropriate and accessible to those most affected by structural disadvantage.

States must protect the dignity and rights of health and care workers, including through safe working conditions, and that health and care workers must participate in policy making, oversight and accountability mechanisms that should include changes and updates in medical education, training, and pedagogy that actually includes human rights focus.

There must be an investment in health literacy as well community education so that communities can actually defend their rights to health.

You cannot defend rights you don't know you have.

We must also, like other countries have shown in 14 countries at the regional level that community based mechanisms to establish to monitor and respond to stigma and discrimination have worked and that many populations are able to access dignified services.

Because major structural barriers limiting access to services for these Marshall Eyes and Keep populations have been addressed through consequential and meaningful participations of these communities that are mostly affected.

Community LED mechanisms and models of care have sought to redesign services around relationship based and culturally grounded approaches, including approaches to treat service users as partners rather than just patients, and reversing the paternalistic approach and the dynamics of medicine.

It is important for accountability that Member States continue to be accessible, transparent and ensure that they do not fall into the trap of shrinking civil society space, that they continue to resource feminist and community based initiatives that are there really for the purpose of oversight.

It is important that national human rights institutions have a mandate that is also funded.

This is important to prevent, to mitigate and to provide redress for health and dignity related violations by States and also by non state actors, including of course in healthcare settings, but also in governance of the private sector and in the context of pandemics, climate related disasters, conflict, protracted humanitarian emergencies and the genocide we continue to chronicle and witness.

I_that a rights based health approach must meet imminent needs while building resilience inclusive systems with sustainable communities as an urgent outcome A.

DIGNITY lens helps to ensure that emergency responses do not in themselves entrench discrimination coercion, or lead to further social economic exclusion and that recovery and rebuilding investment strengthen long term equity and must be designed with and by the people who are affected my.

Mandate continues to bear witness and receive testimonies of how cruel that this world is, but also testimonies on how this mandate and its interventions have led to more people living dignified lives.

It has been important to me too, as a person who embodies many characteristics that lead to prejudice and discrimination, stigmatisation and criminalization.

I'm a black woman from South Africa who herself as a childhood survivor of a brutal apartheid regime and continues to live another crushing weight of racism and its legacies of colonialism and imperialist violence showing itself in very personal terms.

It's important to bring this perspective to the work of the right to health because they directly impact human dignity and life and non discrimination and equality.

The work of the mandate has been six years long, but this tyranny was and remains life saving work for me too.

And it's my hope that in doing this work with diligence and focus and centering the people who are often at the margins, that we recognise what true solidarity can look like.

And even in the face of fierce personal and targeted attacks and bioterrorism, incitement of violence against me as a person and amended holder, spilling over and leading into domestic spaces such as professional harassment I'm currently experiencing, and intimidation both in real life and online spaces.

I want to recognise the solidarity of my own colleagues and my own peers and comrades.

It can never replace the duty of care of such global institutions such as the United Nations that despite the seriousness of the implications of these sustained attacks, I do want to thank all of the communities who have held the ground, solid as it was, being shaken beneath me.

I remain able and empowered even in the silent moments, to choose the moments and the arena of my battles.

And I have battled in these last six years.

It has been an honour of a lifetime to serve you as the UN Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.

This has been a deeply personal task and through this mandate of the right to health, through using the methods of work afforded to me by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, I have used those tools and the methods of work to recenter the margins.

I continue to be unreasonably hopeful that the realisation of the right to health of everyone, everywhere can be realised.

I remain in unwavering deep solidarity with all healthcare workers and health providers in the world, the oath takers, the ones who stay knowing that abduction, harassment, detention, torture and often death awaits them.

The practise of medicine is not a crime.

The right to health enables all of us to create, to be, to live, to thrive and to have joy and to not merely just survive.

And that is my wish for all of us, for your future.

That we can have a different connection as humanity that is not based on collective traumas that we have experienced together, but on a cosmovision, a Co creation of a world that is.

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And the extent to which sustainable human development, peace and the security agenda of the UN can be achieved must be measured and understood by the extent to which human rights are protected, promoted and fulfilled by all Member States.

And as I end, I want to make a call for the release of all healthcare workers around the world who remain in detention and abduction, who are harassed and intimidated and tortured every day for doing the work, for being the oath takers who never leave their patients.

You should never have to be that brave and it's my hope that as we continue in that vocacy that many of you can go back to doing the job that you love, which is giving dignity to the people who are most vulnerable.

Your patience and of course, I will leave this podium in a few minutes.

And the work and the tasks I had are very, very broad for my narrow shoulders.

And I wish that my successor all the best in their endeavour to carry on the very honourable work of taking care and listening to the billions of people who continue to have trust in this mandate and in this institution of the United Nations.

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Thank you very much to the Special Rapporteur for this very moving and inspirational words.

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I think we have some people online just in case there are questions.

Please state your name and organisation before asking a question.

[Other language spoken]

Any questions online for the special operative?

[Other language spoken]

So since we don't have any questions at this time, please feel free to raise your hand after if necessary.

I will ask the special operator to then present her closing remarks so we can close the briefing.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much.

And I, I do, in closing, want to reiterate my call that I've been making for several months now on the immediate release of Doctor Abu Safia, who is currently in detention in Israeli prison for all that he did as a medical worker.

There are many other healthcare providers who remain in detention without fair processes and is important as a medical doctor myself with a very uncertain future, to continue advocating that all healthcare workers who are in detention everywhere around the world must be immediately released.

That they are human rights and their dignity is important as their key to translating the very work of the United Nations of policy making of ensuring that Member States can fulfil their right to health.

Healthcare workers should not be acceptable as collateral damage of any protected war, conflict, let alone a genocide.

In closing, I want to say that accountability is very important form the mandate of the right to health, and accountability is a shared commitment that we all have that violations of human dignity will not be tolerated and therefore effective accountability strengthens that public trust and reinforces the normative force of the right to health.

I urge Member States to move from state failures that perpetuate an abrasive relationship between healthcare workers and patients on the ground.

Health and care workers may be the face of a healthcare system.

Sometimes that is ailing, sometimes that is successful.

But as things stand, we have to support and empower healthcare workers to be effective communicators and managers of resources and to really be the leaders in their community.

The generations coming after us, and the manager in generations we lose daily, demand our acknowledgement of our own blind spots.

Realising the right to health for all means that the plurality of the human experience must be taken into account.

We must question power everywhere we see it.

We need to interact with it.

It morphs and changes itself into many different ways.

But ultimately we cannot ignore the historical and ingoing injustices that necessitate these common commitments to equity.

Health cannot be realised without treating humans with dignity and dignity cannot flourish without health.

And therefore health systems require facilities, goods, services, biomedical discovery and scientific progress that are available, accessible, acceptable and of quality and delivered under equitable conditions that are also responsive and agile to the diverse needs of the population.

And in closing, I just want to say that dignity cannot be an aspirant claim or just an aspiration.

It is a practical, important, urgent demand that we need to meet in order to create the futures that we want, where we shift from just survival and suffering to thriving.

And for the last time, as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, I am Doctor Kaling Mufugen, I am from Gwagwa in Puchalicaba in South Africa.

This has been an honour of a lifetime.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much, Special Rapporteur.

As this will be Doctor Mufa King's final time in this briefing room, we just want to extend a special note of thanks for her work in promoting and protecting human rights and for the lived experience she brought to the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the right to help.

We wish her every success in her future endeavours.

Thank you very much for being here, and we will now close this press conference.