6. Global Health (FCGH)

Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH)

March 2021; click on the link above for updates and resources on this topic.

Proposal:

The Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH), a proposed global treaty, "would be based in the right to health and aimed at addressing the central shortcomings in implementing the right to health and the opportunity for all people, wherever they live, whoever they are, to have the opportunity to live long, healthy lives. Core areas that the FCGH would cover include 1) improving national and global accountability to health commitments and to the right to health itself, including by ensuring people’s opportunity to participate in health-related decisions from community to global levels; 2) ensuring non-discrimination and addressing persisting marginalization and immense health inequities; 3) increasing national and global health financing, and; 4) ensuring that all sectors of society work towards fulfilling the right to health, and that none (such as intellectual property or trade regimes) undermine this right." (About the FCGH, January 2018, http://fcghalliance.org/about/)

The FCGH has received growing support for global health leaders, including in civil society, leading to the formation of the FCGH Alliance, an NGO that launched on Human Rights Day 2017. The creation of the FCGH Alliance injected new energy into the movement for the FCGH, and welcomes your participation -- with a special commitment to enabling the participation of people who themselves experience health inequities and violations of their own right to health.

For more information about the FCGH:

Visit the FCGH website: http://fcghalliance.org/. You can also see the FCGH briefing paper, with an overview of the proposal: https://www.jalihealth.org/documents/a-rights-based-framework-for-the-sdgs-and-beyond.pdf.

To join the FCGH Alliance, or to contact the Alliance to learn more, please visit: http://fcghalliance.org/join/.

For additional information, please see:

FCGH Alliance website

FCGH briefing paper (September 2017)

FCGH sign-on letter to Dr. Tedros (September 2017)

Lancet Global Health article calling for new WHO Director-General to support FCGH (December 2016)

Precious Matsoso/Mushtaque Chowdhury Devex FCGH opinion piece (November 2016)

FCGH FAQ (May 2016)

Health and Human Rights Journal article on FCGH and accountability (January 2016)

Health Care Analysis article on the FCGH and right to health (December 2015)

Global Health Governance journal FCGH special issue (2015)

Health and Human Rights Journal FCGH special issue (June 2013)

Yale Journal of Health Law, Policy, and Ethics article on FCGH (2013)

Note:

GMH colleagues have an opportunity to give input on the proposed FCGH. Eric Friedman has suggested several items to consider for GMH-related input. Here they are below (and there are of course other importat items for input, in light of SDGs and other developments).

1. Questions around progressive realization from a global mental health perspective (see p. 6)

2. Questions around minimum standards of health services from global mental health perspective (p. 7; see also p. 21), including whether these should vary across country wealth spectrum, and if so how (including e.g., what level of detail do you think would be useful in the treaty itself as opposed to being defined through local processes? should these be set through reference to other instruments [e.g., global plan of action on mental health -- though its time period of 2020 will probably have come to an end before FCGH is adopted)]?);

3. Specific mental health obligations following natural disasters or in conflict situations (p. 9)? [humanitarian mental health and psychoscial support]

4. How to ensure that people with mental health disabilities are part of national and local accountability mechanisms (see generally p. 18); [input/influence of MH users/consumers]

5. Addressing health workers, should FCGH have anything to say about mental health workers (p. 21)? [supporting mental health workers]

6. Key areas related to targeted health outcomes (p. 22), should mental health be there -- and if so, how? -- to avoid its marginalization?

7. National processes from the perspectives of users of mental health services (e.g., how currently do people with mental health disabilities get represented in these processes, how should they be involved and represented?)

8. Information on existing national health packages and mental health (p. 23)? [examples of good MH policy in different countries and different SES]

9. How sectors/regimes outside health affect mental illness in ways that the FCGH should be addressing (see generally p. 25); [multi-sectoral influences on MH]

10. Specific measures that governments should take with respect to health equity and people with mental illness (p.27, especially the question on the right to health for marginalized populations (pp.29-30), perhaps on defining marginalized populations [people with disabilities are commonly recognized as a marginalized population -- is this true with respect to both physical and mental disabilities?])

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See the items in the attachments below.