Indigenous health in a global frame: from community development to human rights

This essay explores the shift from 'human rights' to community development' in the framing of Koori (or Indigenous) health policy research at the University of Melbourne in the 1990s. It provides an overview of the recent history of rights-based discourses in international health, contrasting cosmopolitan claims of rights with older civic reference points for health intervention: such as 'citizenship' and 'community development.' In particular it considers the relations of the conjunction 'health and human rights' to the global emergence during the past twenty years of nongovernmental organisations and their challenge to the power of the nation-state. This account draws heavily on the author's observation of the institutionalisation of rights discourses in health research programs at Melbourne and Harvard, vantage points that provide at best a partial perspective, but one that may nonetheless reveal some salient historical features.