In 2008 Merck continued to work with the Danish Institute for Human Rights and a number of other pharmaceutical companies to develop a sector-specific human rights risk assessment tool that defines our health-related human rights obligations. Merck intends to conduct a human rights self-assessment to determine its strengths and weaknesses in fulfilling these obligations.

In February 2008, Merck provided formal comments on the UN Guidelines for Pharmaceutical Companies in Relation to Access to Medicines and the Right to Health, developed by former UN Special Rapporteur Paul Hunt. Merck believes the approach to define guidelines for the pharmaceutical industry alone is misguided and will not result in meaningful improvements given that they do not directly address the underlying issues preventing the achievement of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.  Click here for a copy of Merck’s response ( PDF*).

The content on this page was last modified on September 15, 2009.

Merck & Co., Inc., Whitehouse Station, NJ, USA, and Schering-Plough Corporation, Kenilworth, NJ, USA, are now one company. We have combined our global operations under the name Merck & Co., Inc. We are working to update our corporate responsibility Web site to reflect our new, combined, global organization.