The Initiative is dedicated to advocating for a human rights approach to health wherever it is needed. It does this locally and globally with political leaders, government officials and civil servants within relevant Ministries, non-governmental organisations and private entities.

On the 10th December 2008, the UNSW Initiative for Health and Human Rights, the Australian Human Rights Centre, and the Diplomacy Training Program celebrated the 60th Anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights with Lord Bingham, leading human rights jurist and former Master of the Rolls and Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales and Elizabeth Evatt AC, former member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the United Nations Human Rights Committee. In addition, a group of young people from the Ethnic Communities Council of NSW’s Youth Wing staged a performance reciting the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in multiple languages.