What does human rights abrogation really mean?
In conflict settings like Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan, military forces specifically target civilian ethnic populations in many cases for forced displacement. The military objective becomes attacks on civilians and that is a fundamental abrogation of human rights. In nonconflict settings, it means deliberately excluding a group—say injection drug users—and systematically discriminating against them. Everybody has a right to health care no matter their status. How does the Center’s work differ from what most people think of as human rights investigations? Public health has a wide range of tools that can allow us to look at health and status of populations. The sad truth in 2007 is that a great deal of the human rights violations are not violations of rights of individuals but of populations. In Burma, for example, we have a long-standing civil conflict where the military junta is targeting ethnic groups in eastern Burma—the Mon, Karen, Karenni and Shan pe
