Law shapes our health in innumerable ways. It influences health systems and policies, and thus who gets healthcare, for what, when and how – and who gets a say when health polices are designed and implemented. Law are central to whether patients can demand and in fact get the services that they are entitled to. The law also influences which drugs are developed, and by whom, for whom and at what price. At a more fundamental level, the law is integral to the social systems that shape the living conditions that are so crucial for our health: access to clean water and sanitation; to food, housing and education. This round-table will discuss the legal determinants of (ill) health, and the case for rights based approaches reform of health systems and –policies. This event was hosted by the Norad/LawTransform project on “Implementing the right to health in health service delivery”.
Introduction by Alicia Yamin, who moderated a discussion with Alan Maleche, Berit Austveg and Ole Frithjof Norheim.
The meeting formed part of an informal reception at the Knut Fægris House.
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Alicia Ely Yamin is the Director of Health and
Human Rights Initiatives at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University and Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. Yamin is also an Adjunct Lecturer on Law and Global Health at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, a Global Fellow at the Centre for Law and Social Transformation in Norway, and was selected as the 2015-16 Marsha Lilien Gladstein Visiting Professor of Human Rights, University of Connecticut. Before joining Georgetown’s faculty this year, Yamin was at Harvard University, where she directed the JD/MPH Program and serving as Policy Director of the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center on Health and Human Rights. From 2007 to 2011, Yamin held the prestigious Joseph H. Flom Fellowship. Yamin was a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Economic and Social Rights for 15 years (Chair 2009-2015; Vice-Chair 2001-2008). Yamin has published multiple books and edited volumes, as well as over 80 scholarly articles. In 2016, Yamin was appointed by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General to the Independent Accountability Panel (EWEC), on which she currently serves. She is also a commissioner on the Lancet-O’Neill Institute Commission on Global Health and the Law. She has previously served on the Expert Group to the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Task Force on ‘Making Fair Choices Toward UHC’, and WHO’s steering committee for the research project, ‘Evidence of Impacts of Human Rights-Based Approaches to Women’s and Children’s Health’. Yamin has contributed to and consulted on the drafting of multiple General Comments by UN treaty bodies, as well as UN Human Rights Council resolutions. She has also participated in and advised on landmark litigation relating to ESC rights, and in particular health- and sexual and reproductive rights, in multiple countries and regions, as well as to supra-national adjudicative bodies. Yamin was the only non-national appointed by the Colombian Constitutional Court as an Independent Expert on the implementation of its 2008 decision, T 760/08, calling for restructuring the country’s health system, and similarly by Kenya’s Constitutional Implementation Commission to the Oversight Committee for its work on the right to health.
Trained in both law and public health at Harvard, Yamin’s 20+ year career at the intersection of health and human rights has bridged academia and activism. Before joining Georgetown’s faculty this year, Yamin was at Harvard University, where she taught at both the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Law School, as well as directing the JD/MPH Program and serving as Policy Director of the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center on Health and Human Rights. From 2007 to 2011, Yamin held the prestigious Joseph H. Flom Fellowship on Global Health and Human Rights at Harvard Law School. Prior to that, she served as Director of Research and Investigations at Physicians for Human Rights, where she oversaw all of the organization’s field investigations, and was on the faculty of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Yamin was a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Economic and Social Rights for 15 years (Chair 2009-2015; Vice-Chair 2001-2008).
Yamin is known globally for her pioneering scholarship and advocacy in relation to economic and social rights and rights-based approaches to health, and in particular maternal and sexual and reproductive health. She has published multiple books and edited volumes, in English and Spanish, as well as over 80 scholarly articles in both public health and law journals.
In 2016, Yamin was appointed by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General to the Independent Accountability Panel (EWEC), on which she currently serves. She is also a commissioner on the Lancet-O’Neill Institute Commission on Global Health and the Law. She has previously served on the Expert Group to the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Task Force on ‘Making Fair Choices Toward UHC’, and WHO’s steering committee for the research project, ‘Evidence of Impacts of Human Rights-Based Approaches to Women’s and Children’s Health’.
Yamin has contributed to and consulted on the drafting of multiple General Comments by UN treaty bodies, as well as UN Human Rights Council resolutions. She has also participated in and advised on landmark litigation relating to ESC rights, and in particular health- and sexual and reproductive rights, in multiple countries and regions, as well as to supra-national adjudicative bodies. Yamin regularly participates in regional judicial colloquia and strategic litigation courses for practitioners, as well as expert consultations relating to human rights and development.
Yamin was the only non-national appointed by the Colombian Constitutional Court as an Independent Expert on the implementation of its 2008 decision, T 760/08, calling for restructuring the country’s health system, and similarly by Kenya’s Constitutional Implementation Commission to the Oversight Committee for its work on the right to health.
Berit Austveg is educated as a physician. 
From 1976-88 I headed a clinic in Oslo for immigrants. From 1988 I have worked as community health physician, at global, national and country levels, in Norad, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Directorate of Health, UNFPA, Norwegian Board of Health Supervision and as acting Chief County Medical Officer in Finnmark county. The main focus in global health has been sexual and reproductive health, including negotiating at ICPD in Cairo in 1994, and at follow-up global conferences. For 6 years I was at the Board of Directors of Ipas, and for 8 years chair of the Board of Trustees of Reproductive Health Matters. I have written textbooks on population issues, sexual and reproductive health, and health work for migrants.