The FXB Center for Health and Human Rights AT Harvard UNIVERSITY

About the FXB Center

FXB International’s sister organization the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University is the first academic center to focus exclusively on the practical dynamic between the issues of health and human rights. The FXB Center at Harvard is a world leader in building a conceptual basis of the right to health and driving advocacy initiatives to incorporate human rights norms into international health policy.

The FXB Center at Harvard combines the academic strengths of research and teaching with a strong commitment to service and policy development. FXB Center faculty and initiatives work at international and national levels in collaboration with health and human rights practitioners, governmental and nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions, and international agencies to:

• build knowledge of how human rights entitlements can translate into effective actions for vulnerable children;
• support partners who are doing the daily work of delivering health interventions in resource-poor settings; and
• train new generations of global health leaders who can implement and scale up successful interventions that are guided by human rights principles.

Together FXB International and the FXB Center at Harvard strive to meld practice and theory to better reach the needs of vulnerable children and their communities. FXB International serves as a  field laboratory for the FXB Center at Harvard and is the first NGO to have translated the rights outlined in the convention on the rights of the child into effective service delivery in impoverished settings. Visit the FXB Center at Harvard’s website to learn more.

The Founding of the FXB Center

The founding of the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, in 1993, was the product of the remarkable partnership of the Albina du Boisrouvray and Dr. Jonathan Mann.

Albina had heard about Jonathan Mann’s work at the World Health Organization. “To me he was a warrior fighting against AIDS at large,” she wrote, “standing for health and human rights, committed to rescue the discriminated, the most destitute, the most vulnerable ones.” Shortly before they met, Jonathan Mann had read a news account about a “mysterious countess” who had given a grant to educate health workers in developing countries about pediatric AIDS. “I remember thinking that it was wonderful that such angels existed,” he said.

In 1991, Albina du Boisrouvray funded the Global AIDS Policy Coalition at the Harvard School of Public Health, which had Jonathan Mann as its director. A year later, her foundation announced that it was giving $20 million, its largest gift ever, to establish the FXB Center and to pay for construction of the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud building in Boston, and the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Professorship in Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health.