OpenForum – a blog by the Health and Human Rights community

Touring Africa in May, Pope Benedict XVI provoked controversy when he told an enthusiastic crowd in Cameroon that condoms are an ineffective solution to the spread of HIV. His words sparked a global reaction, opening international discussion about the use of condoms and the Pope’s impact on health and social behavior. The heated response raises a provocative question: do the Pope’s words promote the violation of human rights?  Does the vocal distribution of condom misinformation impede the listeners’ right to knowledge?

This first explicit statement from the Pope on the subject was congruent with previous Vatican statements that moral and devout abstinence, in place of condoms, should be the primary prevention strategy. However, Pope Benedict went further, claiming that distribution and use of condoms increases the problem and can in fact spread the virus. The scientifically incorrect statement, which conflicts with knowledge on the proven effectiveness of condoms, jeopardizes the human right to “share in scientific advancements and benefits” as written in Article 27 of the UDHR. In a global outcry, health officials and religious leaders asserted that the Pope’s disregard of scientific evidence is extremely dangerous given the strong influences that Catholicism and its leader have in Africa. Read more

In 1995, after producing a successful weekly TV program about apartheid in South Africa against all odds, we broadcast an edition of a new series that explored revolutionary ideas about human rights, such as those then being formulated by a visionary at Harvard named Jonathan Mann. In our show, called Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television, Dr. Mann laid out in typically brilliant fashion the crystal-clear thinking behind his vision of human rights – and in particular, his then (and still) controversial notion that health and human rights are inextricably linked, that access to quality health care is a self-evident, inalienable right shared by all human beings, as recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted without dissent by the entire United Nations sixty years ago. Read more