Sharifah Sekalala
Biographic Data
| ID | 4075291 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sharifah Sekalala |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sharifah |
| FAMILY NAME | Sekalala |
| SIGNATURE | SEKALALA S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Warwick |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5434-5245 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Health and human security
Since it was first advanced in the 1994 Human development report of the United Nations Development Programme [United Nations Development Project. (1994). Human development report. New York: UN], the concept of ‘human security’ has evolved as a holistic development-oriented acuity [Nef, J. (1999). Human security and mutual vulnerability: The global political economy of development and underdevelopment (2nd ed.). Ottawa: International Development R…
Addressing the compliance gap? UN initiatives to benchmark the human rights performance of states and corporations
This article examines under what conditions benchmarking and associated measurement initiatives produced by UN human rights actors could, and should, play a role in promoting compliance with international human rights norms. It is organised around a comparative analysis of UN benchmarking initiatives for states and corporations. With regard to states, the article argues that ideological misgivings and technical limitations have so far triumphed o…
Categorising the Gendered Harms to Caregivers During Humanitarian Emergencies
Recent global health emergencies have highlighted the critical role of health care workers in stemming the spread of pandemics. Healthcare workers provide an essential service to local communities impacted by epidemics such as Ebola. Global health scholars suggest that carers may suffer harm while performing this essential work. Building on feminist theories of ‘harm’ and ‘social reproduction’, this article uses as case studies the early 21st cen…
A socio-legal critique of the commercialization of digital health in Sub-Saharan Africa
Addressing the compliance gap? UN initiatives to benchmark the human rights performance of states and corporations
This article examines under what conditions benchmarking and associated measurement initiatives produced by UN human rights actors could, and should, play a role in promoting compliance with international human rights norms. It is organised around a comparative analysis of UN benchmarking initiatives for states and corporations. With regard to states, the article argues that ideological misgivings and technical limitations have so far triumphed o…
Health and human security
Since it was first advanced in the 1994 Human development report of the United Nations Development Programme [United Nations Development Project. (1994). Human development report. New York: UN], the concept of ‘human security’ has evolved as a holistic development-oriented acuity [Nef, J. (1999). Human security and mutual vulnerability: The global political economy of development and underdevelopment (2nd ed.). Ottawa: International Development R…
Soft Law and Global Health Problems
Various legal approaches have been taken internationally to improve global access to essential medicines for people in developing countries. This book focuses on the millions of people suffering from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Beginning with the AIDS campaign for antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, Sharifah Sekalala argues that a soft law approach is more effective than hard law by critiquing the current TRIPS flexibilities within the World Trade Or…
Who gets to sit at the table? Interrogating the failure of participatory approaches within a right to health framework
An increasing number of global health institutions are focusing on a human rights approach to increasing participation in making health decisions as a means of establishing legitimacy. This article analyses how global health institutions are enabling participation on the ground level. In 2012, the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria came up with a new funding model that required successful applicant countries to put human rights a…
Health and human rights are inextricably linked in the Covid-19 response
To mitigate the spread of COVID-19, governments throughout the world have introduced emergency measures that constrain individual freedoms, social and economic rights and global solidarity. These regulatory measures have closed schools, workplaces and transit systems, cancelled public gatherings, introduced mandatory home confinement and deployed large-scale electronic surveillance. In doing so, human rights obligations are rarely addressed, desp…
Human rights mechanisms for anti-corruption, transparency and accountability
Human rights mechanisms should drive greater attention to the importance of addressing corruption in health. In order to make the UPR more effective, this paper suggests that there is a need to generate more awareness of corruption-based violations of the right to health in order to promote greater health accountabilityPractical tools such as strategic litigation and social audits can also contribute to creating greater transparency and accountab…
Categorising the Gendered Harms to Caregivers During Humanitarian Emergencies
Recent global health emergencies have highlighted the critical role of health care workers in stemming the spread of pandemics. Healthcare workers provide an essential service to local communities impacted by epidemics such as Ebola. Global health scholars suggest that carers may suffer harm while performing this essential work. Building on feminist theories of ‘harm’ and ‘social reproduction’, this article uses as case studies the early 21st cen…
Decolonising human rights
The recent rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines offers hope in addressing the worst pandemic in a hundred years. However, many countries in the Global South face great difficulties in accessing vaccines, partly because of restrictive intellectual property law. These laws exacerbate both global and domestic inequalities and prevent countries from fully realising the right to health for all their people. Commodification of essential medicines, su…
An intersectional human rights approach to prioritising access to Covid-19 vaccines
We finally have a vaccine for the COVID-19 crisis. However, due to the limited numbers of the vaccine, states will have to consider how to prioritise groups who receive the vaccine. In this paper, we argue that the practical implementation of human rights law requires broader consideration of intersectional needs in society and the disproportionate impact that COVID-19 is having on population groups with pre-existing social and medical vulnerabil…
The changing climates of global health
International audience
Lodestar in the Time of Coronavirus? Interpreting International Obligations to Realise the Right to Health During the Covid-19 Pandemic
While the right to health has gained significant momentum in international law over the past two years, there is little clarity on what it means for States to comply with this right in times of COVID-19. Taking Articles 2(1) and 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as a starting point, our article follows an approach guided by the rules of treaty interpretation under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties…
Global health governance through the UN Security Council
This article examines how the ‘health security’ paradigm positions health-related human rights as subordinate to national security concerns. As a consequence, health is viewed instrumentally, shifting the global health response towards maintaining national security rather than upholding human rights. We trace here how both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Security Council have approached global health crises, evolving ac…
Regime Shifting by Multinational Corporations within Constitutional Courts in Developing Countries
Increasing awareness of the harms associated with tobacco led governments around the world to introduce a range of measures, from smoke free laws to restrictions in the advertisement of tobacco products, especially in the wake of signing the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control ( FCTC ). The tobacco industry began challenging this growth of regulation in international courts and courts in developed countries. More recently, they have brought t…
A critical juncture for human rights in global health
Fig 1), establishing a human rights foundation under the United Nations (UN), has become a cornerstone of global health, central to public health policies throughout the world
Towards a Feminist Geo-legal Ethic of Caring Within Medical Supply Chains
The COVID-19 crisis illustrates the fragility of supply chains. Countries with excellent health systems struggled to ensure essential supplies of food, medicines, and personal protective equipment which were vital to a fast and effective response. Using geo-legality, which maps the constitutive relations between law and space, we argue that the failure of supply chains in many western countries during the crisis reveals a fundamental tension betw…
Colonialism in the new digital health agenda
The advancement of digital technologies has stimulated immense excitement about the possibilities of transforming healthcare, especially in resource-constrained contexts. For many, this rapid growth presents a ‘digital health revolution’. While this is true, there are also dangers that the proliferation of digital health in the global south reinforces existing colonialities. Underpinned by the rhetoric of modernity, rationality and progress, many…
Navigating time equity
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been a surge in calls for equity to protect the world from future crises. Calls have emphasized equitable distribution of vaccines, a fair access and benefit sharing (ABS) system, and health systems strengthening, all leading to negotiation of a Pandemic Treaty
The Trump Administration’s ‘earthquake’ is why we need the New Public Health Order
Human Rights Limitations in World Health Organization Reforms
Human rights have served as a central normative framework for global health law, with the World Health Organization (WHO) providing an institutional foundation to implement human rights law through global health governance. In implementing human rights obligations, WHO has sought to bring human rights into its normative standard-setting to promote health equity—within and between countries. Yet, WHO faced challenges in realizing human rights to e…
America First, Africa Last? Health data deals and the new scramble for pathogens
Building reparative futures demands a reckoning with the crisis form of global health
Recent cuts to global health funding and US withdrawal from the World Health Organization have generated claims that global health has entered a new crisis. This essay argues that such accounts misread the present moment. The better view is that global health operates through a ‘crisis form’, a modality of governance in which structural inequality is treated as ordinary, acute disruptions (Big Events) are framed as emergencies, and responses to B…
A Critique of the Emancipatory Promise of Open-Source Software in Digital Health in LMICs
Digital health innovation through open-source software (OSS) is often presented as a critical response to the health system crises that low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) face due to inadequate public health infrastructure. Proponents of OSS argue that it offers a more sustainable, economical, and democratic approach to developing health solutions in underresourced contexts. Drawing on the experiences of software developers in East Africa w…
Digital Health Data Regulation in a Neoliberal Era
Data-driven health technologies hold the potential to improve healthcare delivery. Yet they also facilitate the large-scale extraction and commodification of sensitive health data through a phenomenon often described as ‘digital health surveillance capitalism.’ This model has largely gone unchecked, as prevailing regulatory approaches prioritise privacy and security while neglecting broader societal harms arising from datafication. These societal…
Digital health for shared value
The promise of digitalisation in achieving Universal Health Coverage in postcolonial contexts is undermined by the realities of insufficiently resourced public healthcare systems. In response, private health insurance is often seen as essential to healthcare delivery. The provision of this private health insurance is increasingly mediated through digital infrastructures, with providers leaning into the promise of data-driven behavioural economics…
Regulating digital health in the Global South
The question of how digital health is regulated has become increasingly important within debates on technology, inequality and global health. While digital health is frequently celebrated for its capacity to expand access, build resilient systems and advance equity, scholars have raised critical concerns about its role in reproducing asymmetries of power. The potential for reproducing rather than curbing inequality is particularly relevant for th…
Law (18 works) · Political science (18 works) · Health care (12 works) · Human rights (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Global Security and Public Health (11 works) · Human Rights and Development (11 works) · Medicine (11 works) · Economics (10 works) · Global health (10 works)