Adjudicating Health-Related Rights: Proposed Considerations for the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and Other Supra-National Tribunals (original) (raw)

Adjudicating Health-Related Rights: Proposed Considerations for the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and Other International Tribunals

Social Science Research Network, 2016

This article examines how various supra-national tribunals have approached adjudication of health-related rights, and makes proposals with respect to some special considerations posed by health-related cases that the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and other supra-national bodies will invariably face. After briefly setting out the contours of the right to health under international law, we stress the importance of an approach to adjudication that acknowledges underlying determinants, but also that defines the obligations of the health sector, explicitly acknowledging the interdependence and indivisibility of health with human rights. Second, reviewing some lessons from other supranational tribunals, we address the question of when a supra-national tribunal should order interim measures in a health-rights related case. Third, we explore the uniquely important role 

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health: Key Objectives, Themes, and Interventions

Health and Human Rights, 2003

In April 2002, the United Nations (UN) Commission on Human Rights established a new "special procedure"-the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, to which the author was appointed in September 2002. It is in this capacity that the author has written this first-person commentary, in which he sets out his vision for the key objectives, themes, and interventions to be pursued over the course of his mandate. Included here are his three primary objectives-to promote and encourage others to promote the right to health as a fundamental human right; to clarify the contours and content of the right to health; and to identify good practices for operationalizing the right to health at the community, national, and international levels-and the ways they should be approached.

The Human Right to Health: In International, Regional and National Legal Instruments

Global Scientific Journals , 2021

This Article discusses the contents, essential elements of human rights to heath, right to health and other fundamental principles of human rights in international, regional and national legal instruments. The human right to health discussed in this Article is only from the legal point of view. Almost all international human rights treaties recognize the right to "highest attainable standard" of health. The human right to health perceived as significant aspect of economic development, environmental issues, and the rights of children-all currently important international concern. The human right to health importantly focuses the attachment of health status to the issue of dignity, non-discrimination, justice and participation. Almost all states of the world at least signed one international human right treaty that recognize health as human right but the problem is there is no flexible standard that consider the developing nations their level of wealth and development for progressive realization of this right.

Human Rights Treaties Are an Important Part of the “International Health Instrumentariam”; Comment on “The Legal Strength of International Health Instruments - What It Brings to Global Health Governance?”

2018

In their commentary, Haik Nikogosian and Ilona Kickbusch argue for the necessity of new binding international legal instruments for health to address complex health determinants and offer a cogent analysis of the implications of such treaties for future global health governance. Yet in doing so they pay no attention to the existing instrumentarium of international legally binding treaties relevant to health, in the form of human rights treaties. International human rights law has entrenched individual entitlements and state obligations in relation to individual and public health through iterative human rights treaties since 1946. These treaties offer normative specificity, institutional monitoring and the possibility of enforcement and accountability. If we are to build a new 'international health instrumentariam' we should not ignore existing and important tools that can assist in this endeavor.

Interpreting the International Right to Health in a Human Rights-Based Approach to Health

Health and human rights, 2016

This article tracks the shifting place of the international right to health, and human rights-based approaches to health, in the scholarly literature and United Nations (UN). From 1993 to 1994, the focus began to move from the right to health toward human rights-based approaches to health, including human rights guidance adopted by UN agencies in relation to specific health issues. There is a compelling case for a human rights-based approach to health, but it runs the risk of playing down the right to health, as evidenced by an examination of some UN human rights guidance. The right to health has important and distinctive qualities that are not provided by other rights-consequently, playing down the right to health can diminish rights-based approaches to health, as well as the right to health itself. Because general comments, the reports of UN Special Rapporteurs, and UN agencies' guidance are exercises in interpretation, I discuss methods of legal interpretation. I suggest that...

Justiciability of the Right to Health in International Legal System

Right to health is a fundamental right that has been mentioned in several international and regional documents and national laws. Since the beginning of the codification of human rights documents, there have been some challenges about justisiability of Economic, Social and Cultural rights including the right to health as one of the most important components of these rights. This led to the ignorance of these rights by the governments and the issue turned into a mean for justifying the violation of human rights of people. In this article, justiciability of the right to health in international system was examined by looking to available studies and relevant legal documents in international law system and the related interpretations by different authorities. The results showed that substantially the right to health is a justiciable right that has been litigated many times in international, regional and national courts. Therefore the governments should realize the minimum necessities for health of the individuals as an inevitable obligation and they should use all the necessary means including administrative, legal, financial and judicial ones in this regard.

Human Rights for Health across the United Nations

Health and Human Rights, 2019

The United Nations (UN) plays a central role in realizing human rights to advance global health. Looking beyond state obligations, the UN has called on all its specialized agencies to implement human rights across all their activities. With globalization compelling these UN institutions to meet an expanding set of global challenges to underlying determinants of health, human rights are guiding these international organizations in addressing public health. These international organizations within the UN system are actively engaged in implementing health-related human rights—in both their mission and their actions to carry out that mission. Through this mainstreaming of human rights, global health institutions have embraced human rights treaty obligations as a framework for global governance. Given the dramatic development of human rights law through the UN and the parallel proliferation of UN institutions devoted to global health and development, there arises an imperative to underst...

Session C-Pa 7a Health and Human Rights Sofia GRUSKIN Daniel TARANTOLA

Since the creation of the United Nations over fifty years ago, international responsibility for health and for human rights has been increasingly acknowledged. Yet the actual linkages between health and human rights had not been recognized even a decade ago. Generally thought to be fundamentally antagonistic, these two worlds had evolved along parallel but distinctly separate tracks until a number of recent events helped to bring them together.