BECAUSE A SYSTEM THAT EXPLOiTS, FAVOURSiNDiViDUALS WHO DO TOO: HUMAN RiGHTS iNSOUTH AFRiCAN HEALTH
Introduction:
Since 1994, the South African government has been molding a neoliberal system that prioritises increasing government revenue above all else. Over time, this has consolidated an underfunded and mismanaged public health sector, which has unsurprisingly compromised the health of the populations but more dangerously, encouraged health professionals to migrate out of South Africa in search of better job prospects in a phenomenon known as brain drain. Ideal abstractions like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights can be used as benchmarks to understand the degree of injury being perpetrated under neoliberal policy thus providing explicit ethical and social reasoning for brain drain."
Context:
According to Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (henceforth addressed as UDHR), everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which their rights set forth in the Declaration can be fully realized (United Nations 1948). And yet there is mounting evidence to suggest that the neoliberal world order that has been consolidating since the 1980’s realizes anything of the sort. Neoliberalism as practised today is exemplified by the movement towards free markets, free trade, minimal government intervention and the absence of economic regulation (Chapman 2019). The motivation behind this movement however can be traced back to classical liberalism that advocates for utilitarian reciprocity as creating an imperfect but egalitarian sense of justice between individuals where they would be kept in check by their desire to be honoured (Bourke 2000)...
Author: Malaika Athar
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