22/09/2020 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
PACE’s Social Affairs Committee is calling for a “dedicated legal instrument”, preferably binding and with global reach, to ensure Artificial Intelligence respects human rights principles, particularly in health care. It would lay down benchmarks in areas such as privacy, confidentiality, the...
22/09/2020 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
“There is a wide variety of chronic and long-term illnesses – such as Lyme disease, Crohn's disease, or Charcot's disease – which cause physical disorders that are often disabling, impacting on society's perception of patients and preventing them from fully enjoying their rights and excluding...
22/09/2020 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
PACE Social Affairs Committee has said it deplores the complacency of both countries of origin and destination concerning children who are “left behind” when their parents migrate abroad for work, potentially depriving them of support and protection. “Leaving millions of children without parental...
18/09/2020 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
“Today we mark the first ever International Equal Pay Day, a welcome UN initiative. Although the gender pay gap is now smaller than it has ever been, we still have a long way to go,” said Selin Sayek Böke (Turkey, SOC), PACE’s rapporteur on socio-economic inequalities. “The pay gap exacerbates...
07/07/2020 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Climate change caused by human activity is “already well present” in Europe, driving extreme heat waves, droughts, heavy precipitation, floods and rising sea-levels, and is set to get worse in the decades to come, PACE parliamentarians were warned this week. Speaking at a virtual public hearing...
18/06/2020 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Participants at a PACE online webinar today looked at lessons from the COVID-19 crisis on child safeguarding and protection, concluding that the pandemic had had a “devastating” impact on children’s mental health, with a special impact on young people unable to take part in sport. The event...
04/06/2020 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
PACE’s rapporteur on Artificial Intelligence in healthcare, Selin Sayek Böke (Turkey, SOC), has again urged a “strong regulatory and ethical framework” for AI in health to ensure public trust, underlining the need for robust data governance, clear consent procedures, and a healthy balance between...
02/06/2020 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
“The lessons from the suffering of the past few months must be that we need to act fast to contain outbreaks, using tried and tested, effective measures, implemented in a rights-compliant way, to avoid a disastrous outcome in terms of lives lost and burden of sickness, as well as knock-on effects...
20/05/2020 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
“The member States' health systems will have to strive to adapt in order to be able to better cope in the future with a health emergency such as COVID-19, while respecting fundamental rights and freedoms,” said Andrej Hunko (Germany, UEL) who was appointed yesterday as rapporteur on the lessons...
19/05/2020 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
PACE Committee on Social Affairs has called on Council of Europe member States “to make addressing sexual violence against children a political priority, to make full use of the available resources and to step up their action and increase co-operation”.During a virtual meeting held today, the...
18/05/2020 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
With COVID-19 raising fears of increased surveillance, PACE’s rapporteur on Artificial Intelligence in healthcare, Selin Sayek Böke (Turkey, SOC), has issued a strong call for a new framework to regulate AI in this area, urging “a new era of citizen empowerment” for health data which will protect...
15/05/2020 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
In the context of the COVID-19 epidemic which has spread to all continents –resulting in more than 4 million cases of infection and 280,000 deaths worldwide to date – what conclusive lessons can be drawn and used in the event of future health crises, while giving priority to human rights? The...