HeaVen - Venezuelan migration, human rights and intersectoral strategies: Towards a new right to primary health care for irregular migrants in Colombia

HEAVEN’s key objective is to conceptualize the right to primary health care (PHC) for irregular migrants—a right that is relevant to law and policy at different levels of governance.

To do this, HEAVEN uses Venezuelan migration in Colombia as a case study, applying sociolegal tools to expand human rights law methodologies and catalyse the synergies between human rights and public health standards to promote healthier communities.

It will focus in particular on creating new knowledge on state and non-state actors’ complementary roles in implementing legal obligations regarding the right to health of vulnerable migrants that are consistent with a PHC approach.

In order to generate this global challenge-responsive knowledge, the researcher will—for the first time—deploy his full skillset, which spans legal practice, NGO volunteer work, and academic research and communication skills.

In combination, he will expand that skillset through HEAVEN’s affiliation with two leading human rights law schools in two different world regions: Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) and Universidad del Rosario (UR).

His home at QUB will be the Health & Human Rights Unit, the first such unit in a top 20 UK law school; at UR, he will be integrated into the law school’s Human Rights Research Group, which is a centre of excellence for research on gender and migration certified by the Colombian Ministry of Science and Innovation.

Both groups and the broader hosting environments will support the researcher’s skills acquisition and training plan, and provide pathways for the project’s impact and diverse outputs.

In line with the goal of IFs, HEAVEN will facilitate the researcher’s international mobility, enabling him to develop new networks for skills development, establish himself on a fast track to a leadership position spanning scholarly and policy communities, and contribute to the challenge of managing mass migration in a way that secures public health and respects human rights.