Chapter Four. The Pluralist Right to Health Care and International Human Rights Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 96-114
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Right To Health Care ◽  
International Human

Human rights violations during the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammed R.M. Elshobake
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Content Type ◽  
International Human ◽  
The Right

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the most prominent human rights violations during the COVID-19 pandemic in accordance with international human rights law. Design/methodology/approach Through doctrinal and legal study and content analysis, this paper analyses the important relevant legal provisions under International human rights law and applies these provisions to the reality of managing the COVID-19 crisis to identify the most prominent human rights violations during the COVID-19 outbreak. This research paper considered as a review paper in that it provides a review of the most prominent measures taken during the COVID-19 crisis, which constitutes violations of international human rights law. Findings It is concluded that some measures that have been taken by countries to confront the COVID-19 pandemic have constituted violations of human rights and did not comply with the legal conditions to restrict human rights. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the ugly fractures in health-care systems, health inequities, racism and discrimination, Undermining the right to freedom of expression and the right to access information, gross negligence in protecting detainees from COVID-19 infection, all of these constitute clear violations of the principles of international human rights law. Research limitations/implications The spread of COVID-19 has not stopped, and its effects still continue, including human rights violations. Therefore, this paper cannot enumerate all human rights violations that occur during the spread of COVID-19. Practical implications Based on the results in this paper, governments need to be more prepared to face any health crisis at all levels including health care, which would reduce human rights violations. Social implications This research paper reflects positively on the social reality, as the adoption of its recommendations leads to the provision of adequate health care to all members of society in accordance with the principles of human rights, granting them the right to access information, protecting their right to freedom of expression, reducing the phenomenon of racism and discrimination and providing adequate health care to all detainees. Originality/value This paper studies an up-to-date topic that we are still living and seeing its effects. The benefit of this paper is to provide recommendations that protect human rights during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Humanitarian Bottom League? Sweden and the Right to Health for Undocumented Migrants

2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Emergency Situations ◽  
International Human ◽  
The Right

AbstractICESCR article 12 generously grants “everyone” the right to the highest attainable standard of mental and physical health. Ironically, “everyone” is reduced to “most” when held up to scrutiny, but certainly includes migrants. Migrants are entitled to the full realization of the right to health regardless of their legal or immigration status. This realization is threatened as States restrict health care, via legal and financial means, in order to punish undocumented migrants and deter migration. One such State is Sweden where the recent “Law Concerning Health Care for Asylum Seekers and Others” caused one progressive Parliamentarian to lament that its restrictive policies regarding health care and undocumented migrants would put Sweden in the “humanitarian bottom league”. Indeed, Swedish legislation, practice and policy are generally inconsistent with its international human rights obligations towards undocumented migrants, asylum seekers and refugees and their right to health. Undocumented migrants are entitled to unsubsidized health care only in immediate and emergency situations. Care is difficult to access and prohibitively expensive in many cases. Asylum seekers and failed asylum seekers who are not in hiding are only entitled to subsidized maternity care, care that cannot wait or emergency care. Moreover, a lack of cultural competence amongst caretakers may have a detrimental impact on the quality of care given to these migrants. Consequently, Swedish practice and policy are often at odds with its international human rights law obligations. This threatens to relegate a State that has always been considered a member of the “humanitarian major league” to a one that wallows in the “humanitarian bottom league”.

Irregular migrants and the human right to health care: a case-study of health-care provision for irregular migrants in France and the UK

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvie da Lomba
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Right To Health Care ◽  
Irregular Migrants ◽  
The Uk ◽  
National Membership

AbstractInternational human rights law attaches the right of health care to the person. States, however, predicate this right on membership in the national community and access to publicly subsidised health care is normally contingent on national membership. With this in mind, this article considers the significance of a human rights approach to access to health care and undertakes a comparative study of health-care provision for irregular migrants in France and the UK. Irregular migrants are ineligible for national membership because they have breached immigration laws. Consequently their right to health care may only arise from international human rights law. This comparative study, however, shows that states resist the idea of a right to health care for people they regard as a threat to national sovereignty. Yet the author posits that the exercise of the government's immigration power may be reconciled with the realisation of irregular migrants' human right to health care.

Patents and Human Rights: A Heterodox Analysis

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Richard Gold
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Patent Rights ◽  
International Human ◽  
The City

Patents and free trade make strange bedfellows. For most of their history, patents have been instruments deployed to resist trade with other countries, not to enhance it. Whether one looks at Venetian laws that punished citizens who practiced local crafts outside the city, the Mercantilist uses to which patents were put in Elizabethan England, or the cartels of the 19th and 20th centuries created on a foundation of interlocking patent rights, patents have had a distinctly protectionist function. It is thus ironic that it is intellectual property rights in general, and patents in particular, that have been held up in recent years as the poster child of much that is wrong with globalization and free trade. Nowhere is this more so than in debates concerning international human rights law and patents, in particular the position that patents violate an international right to health.

scholarly journals 20.A. Round table: COVID-19, infectious diseases, and human rights and risks in public health

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
International Human ◽  
Human Rights Based Approach

Abstract The 21st century has been marked by trans-national epidemics of SARs, MERS, Ebola and most recently COVID-19. In spite of WHO advice to the contrary, some States have responded by closing their borders to persons travelling from certain countries. International human rights law permits restrictions of movement to protect public health, subject to strict tests of necessity and proportionality. To a potentially unprecedented degree, however, the spread of COVID-19 has brought to the fore the use of social distancing measures, and a surge in demand for health care, both of which raise significant questions of equity given disparities in wealth and income within and across populations. This panel discussion will explore how a human rights-based approach supports evidence-based responses to epidemics of infectious diseases, and why a human rights-based response may be more effective than other measures in addressing these global threats. Issues covered will include: Advantages and possible limitations of a human rights-based approach to infectious epidemics.Emerging questions of human rights, distributive justice, regulatory authority and efficacy associated with sustained social distancing measures and the management of health care access in a time of surging demand.Early evidence of the health and social impact of legal responses to COVID-19. Key messages States have both obligations and limitations under international human rights law in preventing and responding to infectious epidemics. The large-scale application of social distancing approaches can create acute pressure on poorer people and poses legal, moral and practical questions about the social burdens of disease control.

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