Alicia Ely Yamin

Alicia Ely Yamin JD MPH PhD is a lecturer on law and the director of the Global Health and Rights Project at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and adjunct senior lecturer on health policy and management at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

Yamin is also senior adviser on human rights and health policy at the global health justice organization, Partners In Health and research leader on “gender and the law” at the Centre on Law and Social Transformation (Norway).

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).

She has been the principal investigator on multi-methods, multi-country studies, participated in setting up a maternal health program in Peru, and has evaluated the alignment of health programs with human rights standards and principles on behalf of both national governments and international institutions.

Yamin has served on numerous other UN, WHO and other global expert committees. She currently serves on the Lancet Commissions on Global Governance and Health 2.0 and on Arctic and Northern Health, as well as the WHO Global Advisory Group on Legislating Maternal Perinatal Death Surveillance and UNFPA’s Technical Advisory Group on Measuring Sexual and Reproductive Agency.

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 edited and authored over a dozen books and UN reports, as well as close to 200 articles in law, policy and public health/medical journals, in both English and Spanish. Her work has also been translated into French, Korean, Portuguese, and Estonian.

A second edition of her most recent monograph, “When Misfortune becomes Injustice: Evolving Human Rights Struggles for Health and Social Equality,” was published by Stanford University Press in 2023. A Spanish edition is forthcoming from the Editorial UniAndes in 2025.