A/HRC/37/36 remove discrimination in health systems, commit to abandoning harmful practices and guide and inspire others to adopt a human rights-based approach to health policies as part of a transformative leadership agenda. In order to provide such leadership and to achieve effective momentum on such an agenda, in its report the High-level Working Group further called on States to create an enabling environment, forge partnerships with people who were rights holders, strengthen accountability and transparency, and report systematically on health and human rights. She concluded by stressing that political support was fundamental to achieving the agenda and that States must embrace this effort. 39. The former President of Finland and co-Chair of the High-level Working Group, Tarja Halonen, praised the historic moment of structural cooperation between WHO and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), created in order to support human rights to and through health. She cautioned that without achieving gender equality and upholding human rights, the Sustainable Development Goals would remain unachievable. Nowhere was the link between gender, human rights and sustainable development more obvious than in health, which she noted was at the heart of sustainable development and enhanced other human rights. Ms. Halonen pointed out that the Highlevel Working Group had been tasked with securing political support and the implementation of human rights in achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, issuing nine bold recommendations, including three specific recommendations to the Director-General of WHO, on how to realize this task. The nine recommendations were based on three key ideas: that health could not be improved without upholding human rights, that human rights could not be realized without health and that nothing was possible without bold leadership at the highest level. The report provided guidance on how to deliver those goals. 40. Pointing out that the world was at a crossroads of opportunities and challenges, Ms. Halonen noted that some regions were witnessing a backlash against health and human rights, and particularly against sexual and reproductive health rights, including access to safe abortion. Nevertheless, she emphasized that such trends could not halt progress on ending the preventable deaths of women, children and adolescents and achieving gender equality. She stated that it was possible to achieve those goals. Based on the experience of Finland, she stressed that the transformation was nothing to be afraid of and would lead to a better society and happier and healthier people. She noted that successful implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals required the involvement of national and local governments, civil society and the private sector. The report called on leaders in those sectors to take up the challenge to realize the rights to and through health. She stressed that only when health and human rights went hand in hand with a human rights-based approach across sectors, could communities not only survive, but thrive and transform. The main responsibility lay with Member States and Governments, but everyone had a role to play in achieving that reality. Ms. Halonen emphasized the urgency of acting now to ensure that the right to health was not an option that Governments could choose to respect or not, it was a human right. 41. The Vice-Minister of Health of Uruguay, Cristina Lustemberg, stated that in Uruguay the right to health was understood as a basic human right that was intertwined with other human rights that must be guaranteed by States, including the rights to food, water, sanitation, adequate housing, decent work, information, non-discrimination and freedom from violence. Those were examples of human rights determinants of health. The right to health covered both physical and mental health. She noted that psychological harm caused by violence and abuse was harder to heal than physical damage and that it was important to adopt comprehensive and intersectional policies with a central focus on the human being. She emphasized the need to work with victims, their families and the environment. That meant that public health policies should adopt an interdisciplinary and human rights-based approach to health. 42. Ms. Lustemberg also pointed to the experience of Uruguay with a human rightsbased approach to health as positive. She noted that the 2008 reform of the national health system had reinforced participation as a guiding principle, with civil society playing a key role in both awareness-raising and implementation. Participation had yielded positive results, as rights holders and civil society had been empowered and actively involved in the 9