Alicia Ely Yamin

Alicia Ely Yamin JD MPH PhD is a Lecturer on Law and the Director of the Global Health and Rights Project at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and a Visiting Professor of Law at the Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Yamin is also Adjunct Senior Lecturer on Health Policy and Management at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Senior Adviser on Human Rights and Health Policy at the global health justice organization, Partners In Health.

Known globally for her trans-disciplinary work in relation to economic and social rights, reproductive justice, the right to health, and the intersections between development paradigms and human rights, Yamin’s career has bridged academia and activism.  She has lived in Latin America and East Africa for much of her professional life and worked with local advocacy organizations, including co-founding a program on health and human rights in the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (Lima, Peru; 1999).

Yamin was appointed by the UN Secretary General as one of ten international experts to the Independent Accountability Panel for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health in the Sustainable Development Goals (2016-2021).  She was the chief consultant to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and drafter of the ‘Technical guidance on the application of a human-rights based approach to the implementation of policies and programmes to reduce preventable maternal morbidity and mortality, “ the first guidance on a ‘human rights-based approach to health’ to be adopted by the UN Human Rights Council. Yamin has served on numerous other UN, WHO and other global expert committees.  She currently serves on the Lancet Commissions on Global Governanace and Health 2.0 and on Arctic and Northern Health, as well as the WHO Global Advisory Group on Legislating Maternal Perinatal Death Surveillance.

Yamin has a long track record in on-the-ground program implementation as well as policy-oriented public health research. She has been the principal investigator on multi-methods, multi-country studies, participated in setting up a maternal health program in Peru, and has evaluated the alignment of health programs with human rights standards and principles on behalf of both national governments and international institutions.

As a specialist in international and comparative law relating to health and sexual and reproductive rights issues, Yamin regularly provides expert testimony to tribunals around the globe, including the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In 2011, Yamin was named by the Colombian Constitutional Court as an Independent Expert on the implementation of T-760/08, a major structural judgment that led to significant health system reform In Colombia. She was also the only non-Kenyan appointed to the oversight committee for health matters of the Constitutional Implementation Commission in relation to the 2010 Kenyan Constitution.

From 2009-2015, Yamin served as Chair of the Board of the Center for Economic and Social Rights (Vice-Chair, 2001-08), and continues to serve on the Advisory Council. She is a current and founding member of the Global Health Law Consortium, as well as Senior Associated Researcher and Advisory Board Member of the Centre on Law and Social Transformation. Yamin also sits on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Bergen Centre on Ethics and Priority Setting (B-CEPS), as well as on the international advisory boards of the RedAAS (Argentine Safe Abortion Access Network) and the Proyecto Mirar (monitoring implementation of Law 27.610, which legalized abortion in Argentina). 

Yamin holds Juris Doctor and Master’s in Public Health degrees from Harvard University, and a Doctorate in Law from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina.  She has edited and authored over a dozen books and UN reports, as well as close to 200 articles in law, policy and public health/medical journals, in both English and Spanish. Her work has also been translated into French, Korean, Portuguese, and Estonian. A revised and substantially expanded second edition of her most recent monograph, When Misfortune becomes Injustice: Evolving Human Rights Struggles for Health and Social Equality, was published by Stanford University Press in 2023. A Spanish edition is forthcoming from the Editorial UniAndes in 2025.

Additional Information

Series Editor: “Global Health, Human Rights and Social Justice,” Brill/Nijhoff Publishers [2022]

Fulbright Senior Specialist, Institute of International Education [2019-Present]

Visiting Scholar, Institute of Advanced Study of the Americas, University of Miami

Joseph P. Flom Academic Fellow on Global Health and Human Rights, Harvard Law School [2007-09; renewed 2009-2011]

Distinguished Visitor, Urban Morgan Institute of Human Rights, University of Cincinnati College of Law [2003]

Echoing Green Foundation Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship [1991-1993]