Human Rights and Biomedical Research Funding for the Developing World: Discovering State Obligations under the Right to Health

1999 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amir Attaran
Author(s):  
Tobin John ◽  
Barrett Damon

This chapter reviews the scope and meaning of the right to health under international law. Drawing on public health discourses and expanding beyond a right to health care, the contours of the right to health have been clarified—to encompass a wide range of social, political, and economic determinants of health—by the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) in its General Comment 14, by academics in the fields of law and public health, and by national governments in their domestic laws and judicial interpretations. The normative content of the right to health now provides a foundation for state obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill the right to health; limitations on other rights for public health goals; the right’s essential attributes of availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality; the minimum core obligations of the right to health; and the progressive realization of health-related human rights.


Author(s):  
John Tobin ◽  
Damon Barrett

This chapter reviews the scope and meaning of the right to health under international law. Drawing on public health discourses and expanding beyond a right to health care, the contours of the right to health have been clarified—to encompass a wide range of social, political, and economic determinants of health—by the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) in its General Comment 14, by academics in the fields of law and public health, and by national governments in their domestic laws and judicial interpretations. The normative content of the right to health now provides a foundation for state obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill the right to health; limitations on other rights for public health goals; the right’s essential attributes of availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality; the minimum core obligations of the right to health; and the progressive realization of health-related human rights.


Author(s):  
Flood Colleen M ◽  
Thomas Bryan

This chapter examines both the power and limitations of litigation as a means of facilitating accountability for the advancement of public health. While almost half of the world’s constitutions now contain a justiciable right to health, the impact of litigation has been mixed. Judicial accountability has, in some cases, advanced state obligations to realize the highest attainable standard of health, but in other cases, litigation has threatened the solidarity undergirding public health systems. There is significant country-to-country variation in interpreting health-related human rights, as well as differing views of the proper role of courts in interpreting and enforcing these rights. Surveying regional human rights systems and national judicial efforts to address health and human rights, it is necessary to analyze how courts have approached—and how they should approach—litigation of the right to health and health-related human rights to improve health for all.


Author(s):  
Colleen M. Flood ◽  
Bryan Thomas

This chapter examines both the power and limitations of litigation as a means of facilitating accountability for the advancement of public health. While almost half of the world’s constitutions now contain a justiciable right to health, the impact of litigation has been mixed. Judicial accountability has, in some cases, advanced state obligations to realize the highest attainable standard of health, but in other cases, litigation has threatened the solidarity undergirding public health systems. There is significant country-to-country variation in interpreting health-related human rights, as well as differing views of the proper role of courts in interpreting and enforcing these rights. Surveying regional human rights systems and national judicial efforts to address health and human rights, it is necessary to analyze how courts have approached—and how they should approach—litigation of the right to health and health-related human rights to improve health for all.


Author(s):  
Gillian MacNaughton ◽  
Mariah McGill

For over two decades, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has taken a leading role in promoting human rights globally by building the capacity of people to claim their rights and governments to fulfill their obligations. This chapter examines the extent to which the right to health has evolved in the work of the OHCHR since 1994, drawing on archival records of OHCHR publications and initiatives, as well as interviews with OHCHR staff and external experts on the right to health. Analyzing this history, the chapter then points to factors that have facilitated or inhibited the mainstreaming of the right to health within the OHCHR, including (1) an increasing acceptance of economic and social rights as real human rights, (2) right-to-health champions among the leadership, (3) limited capacity and resources, and (4) challenges in moving beyond conceptualization to implementation of the right to health.


Author(s):  
Lawrence O. Gostin ◽  
Benjamin Mason Meier

This chapter introduces the foundational importance of human rights for global health, providing a theoretical basis for the edited volume by laying out the role of human rights under international law as a normative basis for public health. By addressing public health harms as human rights violations, international law has offered global standards by which to frame government responsibilities and evaluate health practices, providing legal accountability in global health policy. The authors trace the historical foundations for understanding the development of human rights and the role of human rights in protecting and promoting health since the end of World War II and the birth of the United Nations. Examining the development of human rights under international law, the authors introduce the right to health as an encompassing right to health care and underlying determinants of health, exploring this right alongside other “health-related human rights.”


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 317-321
Author(s):  
Guofu Liu

The COVID-19 pandemic is having serious and disproportionate effects on nationals abroad and their families globally. Many states have adopted positive measures including temporarily suspending forced returns as well providing visa and work permit extensions, temporary residence, or other forms of regular status to ensure that migrants are accounted for in national responses to the pandemic. Nevertheless, the human rights of nationals abroad and nationals with foreign family members have faced significant challenges. Some states have fully or partially closed entry to all of their own nationals and their foreign family members, in violation of nationals’ right to return and their right of family unification. Other states’ nationals abroad have been unable to enjoy the right to an adequate standard of living and the right to health. Many have also encountered the burdens of hate speech in both their home states and the states in which they live, the effect of which has been to undermine freedom of opinion and expression and the right to equality and non-discrimination. This essay identifies and explains these threats to human rights in the era of COVID-19. The essay encourages states to recommit to rights protection.


2018 ◽  
pp. 24-42
Author(s):  
MARÍA DALLI

In 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the first international text recognising universal human rights for all; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 25 recognises the right to an adequate standard of living, which includes the right to health and medical care. On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Declaration, this article presents an overview of the main developments that have been made towards understanding the content and implications of the right to health, as well as an analysis of some specific advancements that aim to facilitate the enforcement thereof. These include: a) the implication of private entities as responsible for right to health obligations; b) the Universal Health Coverage goal, proposed by the World Health Organization and included as one of the Sustainable Development Goals; and c) the individual complaints mechanism introduced by the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (adopted on the 10th December 2008, 60 years after the UDHR).


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