![]() ![]() With Bhutanese citizens consistently found to be among the happiest in the world, the Bhutanese government has sought to enlarge the global development agenda to incorporate notions of happiness. By emphasizing non-economic measures in development policy, looking beyond Gross Domestic Product, the Bhutanese GNH system surveys citizens to assess their holistic well-being. Based upon principles of Mahayana Buddhism, GNH focuses on the advancement of social harmony, preservation of national identity, and sustainability of natural environments. Given international efforts to address health rights in rights-denying states, it is vital that human rights advocates recognize culturally specific limitations to realizing the right to health through national health policy.Īll policies in Bhutan seek to enhance Gross National Happiness (GNH). Advancing understanding of cultural relativism debates at the intersection of health and human rights, it is necessary to account for those states that seek to meet public health goals while denying the larger interrelated set of health-related human rights. Although the Bhutanese government has reformed its national health system in accordance with select norms of the human right to health, the continuing denial of universal equality stands as an impediment to a rights-based health system, with this failure to ensure cross-cutting principles of non-discrimination, participation, and accountability undercutting government efforts to realize the right to health. Given the continuing prevalence of minority rights violations in the region, this study raises research questions for comparative studies in other rights-denying national contexts and advocacy approaches to advance principles of non-discrimination, participation, and accountability through health policy.īhutan straddles two worlds: reforming health policy to ensure domestic happiness while denying human rights to minority populations. However, where Bhutan continues to restrict the rights of minority populations-failing to address the ways in which human rights are indivisible, interdependent, and interrelated-additional reforms will be necessary to realize the right to health. Through a landscape analysis of the Bhutanese health system, documentary review of Bhutanese reporting to the United Nations human rights system, and semi-structured interviews with health policymakers in Bhutan, this study examines the normative foundations of Bhutan’s focus on “a more meaningful purpose for development than just mere material satisfaction.” Under this development paradigm of Gross National Happiness, the Bhutanese health system meets select normative foundations of the right to health, seeking to guarantee the availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality of health care and underlying determinants of health. ![]() ![]() The Kingdom of Bhutan is seeking to progressively realize the human right to health without addressing the cross-cutting human rights principles essential to a rights-based approach to health. ![]()
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