Alicia Ely Yamin JD MPH PhD is a Lecturer on Law and the Senior Fellow on Global Health and Rights at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School; Adjunct Senior Lecturer on Health Policy and Management at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health; and Senior Advisor 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, sexual and reproductive health and rights, 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 WHO’s Technical Advisory Group on Health Technology Assessments; the WHO Global Advisory Group on Legislating Maternal Perinatal Death Surveillance; the joint World Bank/Norwegian Institute for Public Health/Bergen Centre on Ethics and Priority Setting project on ‘Health Financing for Universal Health Coverage’; the Lancet Commission on Arctic and Northern Health; and as Co-Chair on the Interim Steering Committee of the Global Public Investment Network (GPIN).

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.

Yamin regularly provides testimony and guidance to tribunals and legislative bodies around the globe, as well as amicus curiae briefs, in relation to the application of international and comparative law to health and sexual and reproductive rights issues.

From 2009-2015, Yamin served as Chair of the Board of the Center for Economic and Social Rights (Vice-Chair, 2001-08). She is a current and founding member of the Global Health Law Consortium; a Senior Associated Researcher of the Centre on Law and Social Transformation (Norway); and a Board member of the global organization, Women in Global Health. In Argentina, Yamin sits 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 first trimester abortion).

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 published multiple books and over 160 articles in law and policy journals, as well as peer-reviewed public health journals, in both English and Spanish. A revised and substantially expanded edition of her latest monograph, When Misfortune becomes Injustice: Evolving Human Rights Struggles for Health and Social Equality, is due out from Stanford University Press in 2023.