ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews briefly the most important achievements of the last decades regarding human rights and their relation to the issue of disability and the great challenges still pending. Related health rights have included access to family planning services, the elimination of discrimination against women, the well-being of refugees, the rights of citizens traumatized by governments and their agents, and the right of children to be free from commercial sexual exploitation. The perspective of older people begins to show us that we must ultimately see the fight for human rights less through the paradigm of atomistic isolation of all "victimized" groups and more within a model of interdependent interaction that recognizes the irreducible mutuality of all people. The ubiquitous conflict between universal standards and local customs and values continues to impede full access to health services by all sectors of the world's population.
