Review and reform laws to reduce health inequalities and strengthen access to universal health coverage.
Where laws, regulations and policies fail to protect human rights and promote universal health coverage for all, including adolescent girls and young women and other vulnerable and key populations, law review and reform is critical.
Enabling legal and policy environments to reduce inequalities and promote effective and inclusive governance for health require the review and reform of all laws, regulations and policies that discriminate against and deny the rights of vulnerable and key populations and/or limit their access to health care services.
Laws that may need review or reform may include, for example:
UNDP supports countries to undertake law review and reform, through the concerted efforts of all national stakeholders and with the technical support of other development partners. This includes initiatives to understand the political commitment from government executives and parliamentarians, support informed decision-making by an active judiciary, and promote advocacy by civil society organizations.
In 2015, Myanmar’s Parliament removed the legal prohibition on possession of needles and syringes in the Excise Act in order to support people who use drugs and to enable health workers to implement needle and syringe exchange programmes. This law reform measure was a priority recommendation endorsed by the joint Parliamentarian and Community Network Consortium Committee on Human Rights and HIV, as part of a legal review conducted in the country.
Non communicable diseases (NCDs), such as cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes and chronic respiratory disease, are the single greatest cause of preventable illness, disability and mortaility worldwide. Nearly three quarters of deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries.
Risk behaviours, such as tobacco use, harmful use of alcohol, physical inactivity and unhealthy diet, place all people at risk of NCDs. However, people living in vulnerable situations may face particular human rights and gender-related barriers to access health information and services to prevent and control NCDs.
In 2012, the President Benigno Aquino III of the Philippines passed the Sin Tax Reform Law, which taxes tobacco and alcohol. The law reform initiative not only intends to discourage people from tobacco and alcohol consumption – important risk factors for non-communicable diseases – but also serves to increase resources for health, since the tax revenues are used to finance universal health coverage and better health care.
Read more: WHO and UNDP (2016) Non-Communicable Diseases: What Heads of State and Government Need to Know
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in countries enacting a wide range of restrictive laws, regulations and policies, many of which severely limit human rights including through legitimizing broad travel restrictions, criminalizing people suspected to have acquired COVID-19, permitting wide-reaching surveillance of residents and authorising sharing of sensitive health data across agencies. Initial research suggests that these laws and their enforcement have disproportionately impacted on key and vulnerable populations.
UNDP, UNAIDS Secretariat and the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University developed an online database of COVID-19 laws, providing an opportunity for analysis, identification of best practice and advocacy for law reform.
