Human Rights Mainstreaming in the World Health Organization: a Comparative Study of Regional Offices

Since 1997, WHO has faced obstacles in efforts to mainstream human rights across the WHO Secretariat and in each of its six regional offices: Africa, the Americas, South-East Asia, Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Western Pacific. Without centralized human rights leadership in an increasingly fragmented global health policy landscape, regional health offices have sought individually to advance human rights in health governance and support states in realizing a rights-based approach to health, aided by a large degree of organizational autonomy uncommon within the UN system. The success of these efforts is uncertain and unequal with some regional offices (e.g. the Pan- American Health Organization) recognized for human rights leadership and others falling to the wayside. Current scholarship on human rights and WHO revolves around the agency’s Secretariat and criticisms of its tenuous and uncertain commitment to a human rights-based approach. Scholars have yet to focus on the important dynamics present within the agency’s regional health governance bodies as they negotiate human rights landscapes largely independent of Geneva. This begs the question: To what extent has human rights rhetoric been translated into rights-based structures, policies and programs in each of the agency’s regional offices? Research Questions: 1. How has each of the six WHO regional offices integrated human rights into their structure, policies and programs? 2. What factors and processes drive and impede the implementation of human rights mainstreaming within WHO regional offices?