Health and Human Rights

Abstract

International human rights law has a good deal to say about matters of health. Even a cursory examination of the leading instruments shows us article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family; and article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR): states recognize the rights of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. The rights of especially vulnerable people to health care are also identified, for example in The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), article 12: states are to take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of health care to ensure equality of access to health care services. There are further particular measures with respect to the health care of pregnant and lactating women, and provisions relating to children, most notably The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), article 24, the right of the child to enjoyment of the highest attainable standards of health and facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health. There are provisions on health in conventions on the rights of migrant workers and their families and rights not to be discriminated against in access to health care. Similarly at the regional level, instruments such as the European Social Charter and the African Charter on Peoples’ and Human Rights provide for a right to health care and health services. What is important about these instruments is they are international treaties creating legally binding obligations, making clear that the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health is now well entrenched within the canon of international human rights law. The instruments have been supplemented by a range of soft law, non-binding institutional mechanisms, for example the establishment in 2002 by the UN Commission on Human Rights of a special rapporteur on health. This position provides a link between the UN human rights machinery and other UN agencies more obviously associated with health, self-evidently the WHO but also FAO, UNICEF, and UNHCR. Given the existence of international specialized agencies, the question must be what the body of human rights law entails for issues of public health, or, to put it another way, what is the value added of including health within human rights law? Why locate health care issues within this international legal framework when they might appear to belong more properly to social, economic, and political policy-making? The most immediate answer to this question is that international human rights law moves an issue ARTICLE IN PRESS