My work

After several conversations with family and friends it has been made to clear to me that no one really knows exactly what I'm doing here in India, other than "human rights law." So, I thought I might take a quick break from posting photos of street scenes to explain a bit about what I spent the vast majority of my days here doing.

Basically, I work on the right to health. Now, I can practically see all of my American readers scratching their heads and asking "Huh?" Well, my fellow compatriots, that is because in the USA we don't have a right to health. In fact, our Constitution doesn't recognize any economic, political or social rights (e.g., right to education, right to participate in cultural life, right to health) although it does enshrine most of the basic civil and political rights (freedom of speech, press, association, right to due process). This is for some interesting historical reasons which I won't get into now--but I will say that it is totally annoying that our Constitution doesn't recognize economic, cultural or social rights because it can be difficult to actually enjoy one's civil and political rights without the corresponding economic, social and cultural rights. (You try enjoying your freedom of the press if you've never learned to read because you have no right to education.) Of course, in the USA we can get away with this because we're a wealthy enough country that we can statutorily legislate to cover for this lacuna in our rights--e.g., even though we have no guaranteed right to education we DO still have universal schooling.

But I digress. The point is much of the rest of the world does recognize the right to health, which is codified at the international level in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Article 12, if anyone is interested). And, lots of regional treaties and domestic constitutions also explicitly recognize the right to health, so there really is a treasure trove of interesting case law and academic interest on this topic.

The right to health, btw, is not the right to be healthy--but basically a set of freedoms (like freedom of bodily integrity) and entitlements (like the right to clean water) which would allow a person to chose how healthy s/he wants to be within the limitations of her own body. It covers the underlying determinants of health (like food, housing, health care) which means that it is a right that is implicated just, everywhere. It's a really interesting field to work in.

So, what do I do in this field? Well, two things. First of all, I run this database. That means I research interesting right to health cases on the domestic, regional and international levels, brief the cases, and stuff them onto our website. It's cool because it means I get to learn loads about how this right has been interpreted in different jurisdictions (and I'm learning lots about international instruments as well) but I got a bit bored doing that, actually. So, I brilliantly realized that my job would be much better if I got other people to do my work for me. And so to that end I've started a bunch of initiatives with US, UK and Indian law schools where I train the students up in the right to health and then have them do my research and briefing for me. Wheeee!

Second of all, I work with my boss, the outgoing United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health on his mandate. This basically means lots of research, report writing, conference attending, conference planning, presentation writing, networking etc. So, for example, in the last two weeks I I (a) attended a conference on National Human Rights Commissions (b) wrote a foreward (in my boss's name) for the latest Amnesty International report on criminalization of sexual and reproductive rights (c) prepared a power point presentation on the issues of development v. human rights in the context of South Asian women's rights (d) tweaked the training I'm giving next week to some US law students (e) followed up with the 5 MIA attendees of a conference we're throwing in October (honestly people--it's a free trip to Delhi--why are you taking so long to get back to me??) (f) reviewed some translations of foreign cases and briefed a couple of more (g) dealt with the invoices for our case translators (definitely my least favorite part of the job).

So, it s bit legal, a bit project management, a bit administrative, a bit research and writing-oriented, a bit boring, a bit interesting. It's pretty different from my big law work though, perhaps unsurprisingly, I have found that the skills and contacts I developed there have been pretty helpful here as well. Hopefully I'll be able to say that about this job whenever I move on to the next!