On 24 June 2025, the Global Centre for Health Diplomacy and Inclusion (CeHDI), in collaboration with the Permanent Missions of Barbados, Guyana, and Rwanda, convened a high-level side event during the 59th session of the Human Rights Council (HRC). The discussion, “Putting Health at the Heart of Human Rights: Leveraging the Universal Periodic Review to Advance the Right to Health,” brought together senior government officials, UN experts, and global health leaders to explore how the HRC’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) can be used more effectively to promote health equity and accountability.

H.E. Ambassador Urujeni Bakuramutsa, Permanent Representative of the Mission of Rwanda to the United Nations in Geneva, opened the session. She thanked the co-organizers of the event and reiterated Rwanda’s commitment to a rights-based approach to health. She described Rwanda’s progress over the past two decades, noting that life expectancy had increased from 49 to 69 years and that more than 90 percent of the population is now enrolled in community-based health insurance. She said “For us the right to health is not just a health issue, it is a basic human right, with legal entitlements and obligations.”

Dr. Haileyesus Getahun, CEO of CeHDI presented on the value of UPR to advance the right to health and regain national health sovereignty in the face of the abrupt cessation of foreign aid that shifts the global health landscape. He reminded that the Right to Health is enshrined in multiple UN resolutions and that there are State obligations to respect the right to health by not interfering, protecting it from third-party violations, and fulfilling it through services, laws, budgets, and policies. He also presented a preliminary analysis of the UPR recommendations conducted by CeHDI to assess the impact of UPR recommendations on long term health outcomes. He presented that among countries that accepted at least 50 percent of maternal health related recommendations of the first three cycles of UPR, a trend of reduction in maternal mortality was observed between 2005 and 2023. He called for stronger participation of Ministries of Health in UPR reporting processes and encouraged stakeholders to use the mechanism to ensure accountability. He said “The UPR is a valuable tool for advancing the right to health and health sovereignty among national governments.”

Dr. Maggie De Block, former Minister of Health of Belgium and member of the CeHDI Advisory Group, mentioned the lack of awareness of the UPR by Ministries of Health and silo working approaches among ministries poses a key challenge in the utility of UPR. She underlined the need to center health and health professionals in multisectoral national policy discussions. “We have to give health and health care workers a place and say in all that is going on at the policy level,” she said. While acknowledging the challenges posed by the COVID crisis, she also noted that the valuable opportunities that it offered countries in making health at the center of the national response during the crisis that affected every sector. She said, ‘’Covid was a difficult period, but we learned some good lessons and we can take them with us.”

In her address, Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health and a fellow member of the CeHDI Advisory Board, called for a deeper understanding of health as a human right. “Human rights demand that we pay attention to those most likely to be left behind.’’ She also referred to her recent report on healthcare workers and emphasized that there is an urgent need to reimagine health systems everywhere in the world in ways that value and care for critical healthcare and care workers. She also said,“There’s a missing link, we need a focus on health and care workers as an integral part of the delivery of the right to health.” Reflecting on the growing presence of commercial interests in public policy spaces, she added, “There are more and more business and for-profit actors gaining access to civil space.” She also called for a shift in how illness is discussed in health systems, stating, “I would love to see the terminology of ‘burden of disease’ dropped, because we’re not talking about diseases, we are talking about individual people, and an ill person could never be a burden.”

H.E. Ambassador Matthew Wilson of Barbados delivered the closing remarks, linking the discussion to broader concerns about global health governance. “In this world of plenty, far too many have far too little, and this extends to healthcare,” he said. He pointed to the negative impact of recent funding cuts to key international health institutions and warned that reduced resources often hit the most vulnerable first. “We know that when there’s a shift in priorities and a crawl back of resources, it is often the most vulnerable who are first affected.” He emphasized the need to fully utilize the UPR process to reflect health priorities and to promote solidarity among governments.

The participants of the meeting have generally agreed that the UPR provides an excellent platform to advance the right to health. It was also further suggested to identify countries willing to highlight health as a core part of their UPR engagement and to collaborate with different partners in providing technical support so that health is better integrated in the human rights mechanisms. The discussion highlighted the increasing relevance of the UPR in global health governance and reaffirmed its potential to serve not only as a reporting tool, but as a mechanism for shared learning, accountability, and rights realization. Speakers emphasized that advancing the right to health through the UPR requires strong data, committed leadership, and the inclusion of civil society and health professionals at every step of the process.