This 30th anniversary of Health and Human Rights (HHR) is an extraordinary moment to think back on how far we have come. The enormous debt we all owe to Jonathan Mann will no doubt be expressed by all contributors to this commemoration. I was privileged to participate in the first two health and human rights conferences in 1994 and 1996 and to have been profoundly influenced by them in both my intellectual development and my professional career. I no doubt owe the invitation to the first conference to Sofia Gruskin, my former teaching assistant, who had taken up a position at the newly created FXB Center for Health and Human Rights (founded thanks to the vision and generosity of Albina du Boisrouvray) and contributed her background in international human rights to the launch of the Center and the organization of the conferences. Jonathan’s inspiring vision that emerged from his experience dealing with the HIV/ AIDS pandemic was expressed so eloquently in this passage of his report for the Hastings Center:

Modern human rights, precisely because they were initially developed entirely outside the health domain and seek to articulate the societal preconditions for human well-being, seem a far more useful framework, vocabulary, and form of guidance for public health efforts to analyze and respond directly to the societal determinants of health than any inherited from the biomedical or public health traditions. 1

It is truly extraordinary for me as a participant to look back at who was there and the spirit that prevailed in our deliberation and outcome documents. The First International Conference on Health and Human Rights (September 1994) was an elaborate event, involving 72 individuals from the health and human rights fields from 23 countries and 21 “affiliated organizations,” including local, national, and international health and human rights groups. It concluded with the adoption of a document enumerating five tasks, along with “actions and follow-up … for each.”2 Rereading that list, I realize how the five tasks exemplify the clear purposefulness of our deliberations and the keen desire to launch a multipronged effort to translate the conceptual linking of health and human rights into a set of meaningful actions.