Working Together for Human Rights
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Human rights and health networking

GLP's major mission is to facilitate cooperative work on human rights by physicians and lawyers, with a primary focus on health. To this end we work to enable these professionals to more easily and effectively combine their skills and influence to promote the human rights and health agenda. In this arena we invited two other major health and human rights organizations in Boston to meet together on a regular basis and engage in joint work. The result of this has been the establishment of the Consortium for Health & Human Rights consisting of GLP, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights (FXB). The consortium did a mailing on the 50th anniversary of the UDHR to the deans of all US medical schools and schools of public health urging them to commemorate the anniversary in a variety of ways, and more than 40 schools responded to this call. The "Call to Action" statement of the consortium was published in JAMA on August 5, 1998 (280:462-64) together with the complete text of the UDHR. The statement has since been endorsed by Mary Robinson, 3 former surgeon generals, 6 medical associations, and 10 human rights organizations.

The consortium was also responsible for coediting Vol. 3, No. 2 (1998) of Health and Human Rights, an issue devoted to the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The issue is available from its publisher, FXB. It is dedicated to its founder (and a member of our original board of advisers) Jonathan Mann, who did more than anyone else to found the field of health and human rights. Other activities of the consortium, including conferences, curriculum development, and support for student organizations can be found at the consortium's website.