ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 reviews the strategy of group-conscious universal application, which represents a proactive reassertion of the starting point of all IHR law, namely its application to all individual human beings. This strategy contends that fully understanding and combating some patterns of human rights violations requires the use of a group-specific lens – even if that group’s shared characteristic is not explicitly found within the texts of IHR instruments. It argues that universal rights can effectively be defended either by identifying distinct social groups as falling under broad “other status” provisions or, more fundamentally, through the recognition that in some cases the universal defense of individuals requires recognition of group-level characteristics that contribute to their vulnerability. The principal examples included in Chapter 4 are persons affected by leprosy, as a distinct group suffering from an ancient stigma in the modern world; older persons, as a group defined by a distinctive and often vulnerable position within the human life course; and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people (LGBT), as a population who possess a minority sexual orientation or gender identity that renders them vulnerable to multiple forms of oppression.
