Advancing the Human Right to Health offers a prospective on the global response to one of the greatest moral, legal, and public health challenges of the 21st century - achieving the human right to health as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and other legal instruments. Featuring writings by global thought-leaders in the world of health human rights, the book brings clarity to many of the complex clinical, ethical, economic, legal, and socio-cultural questions raised by injury, disease, and deeper determinants of health, such as poverty. Much more than a primer on the right to health, this book features an examination of profound inequalities in health, which have resulted in millions of people condemned to unnecessary suffering and hastened deaths. In so doing, it provides a thoughtful account of the right to health's parameters, strategies on ways in which to achieve it, and discussion of why it is so essential in a 21st century context. Country-specific case studies provide context for analysing the right to health and assessing whether, and to what extent, this right has influenced critical decision-making that makes a difference in people's lives. Thematic chapters also look at the specific challenges involved in translating the right to health into action. Advancing the Human Right to Health highlights the urgency to build upon the progress made in securing the right to health for all, offering a timely reminder that all stakeholders must redouble their efforts to advance the human right to health.

The relationship between the processes of economic development and international human rights standards has been one of parallel and rarely intersecting tracks of international action. In the last decade of the 20th century, development thinking shifted from a growth-oriented model to the concept of human development as a process of enhancing human capabilities. The intrinsic links between development and human rights began to be more readily acknowledged. Specifically, it has been proposed that if strategies of development and policies to implement human rights are united, they reinforce one another in processes of synergy and improvement of the human condition. Such is the premise of the Declaration on the Right to Development, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1986. This book explores the meaning and practical implications of the right to development and the related term of human rights-based approaches to development. It asks what these conceptions may add to our understanding and thinking about human and global development. Opening with an essay by Amartya Sen - Nobel Laureate in Economic Science - the book contains a score of chapters on the conceptual underpinnings of development as a human right, the national dimensions of this right, and the role of international institutions. This second edition also includes a new Foreword by Navanethem Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The contributors reflect the disciplines of philosophy, economics, international law, and international relations.

World poverty represents a failure of the international community to see half of the global population secure their basic socio-economic rights. Yet international law foresees cooperation as essential to the realization of these human rights. In an era of considerable interdependence and entrenched economic and political advantage, the particular features of contemporary world poverty give rise to pressing questions about the scope, evolution, and application of the international law of human rights, and the attribution of global responsibility.
This book considers the evolving nature of public international law and human rights with respect to international cooperation as a basis for addressing the role and responsibility of the international community in the creation of an environment conducive to a human-centered globalization. It offers a detailed examination of the historically controversial right to development and, through a careful consideration of its current significance and application, reflects the importance of the rationale of the right to development onto the critical challenge of poverty in the 21st century. Through doctrine and jurisprudence, this book charts recent changes in international law relevant to the ability of states to develop and to fulfill their human rights obligations, and the reality that they are constrained by the actions and structural arrangements of the powerful members of the international community.
This book explores developments in the system of international safeguards meant to correspond to the deprivation of economic, social, and cultural rights today. By analyzing the approach, contribution, and current limitations of theinternational law of human rights to the manifestations of world poverty, the reader is challenged to rethink human rights and, in particular, the framing of responsibilities that are essential to their protection.