This essay explores the shift from 'human rights ' to 'community development* in the framing of Koori (or Indigenous) health policy research at the University of Melbourne in the 1990s. It provides an overview of the recent history of rights-based discourses in international health, contrasting cosmopolitan claims of rights with older civic reference points for health intervention: such as 'citizenship* and 'community development. * In particular, it considers the relations of the conjunction 'health and human rights * to the global emergence during the past twenty years of nongovernmental organisations and their challenge to the power of the nation-state. This account draws heavily on the author's observation of the institutionalisation of rights discourses in health research programs at Melbourne and Harvard, vantage points that provide at best a partial perspective, but one that may nonetheless reveal some salient historical features.