Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T00:36:12.079Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Right to Health Litigation and HIV/AIDS Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Benjamin Mason Meier  and
Alicia Ely Yamin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Domestic litigation has become a principal strategy for realizing international treaty obligations for the human right to health, providing causes of action for the public’s health and empowering individuals to raise human rights claims for HIV prevention, treatment, and care. In the past 15 years, advocates have laid the groundwork on which a rapidly expanding enforcement paradigm has arisen at the intersection of human rights litigation and HIV/AIDS policy. As this enforcement develops across multiple countries, human rights are translated from principle to practice in the global response to HIV/AIDS, transforming aspirational declarations into justiciable obligations and implementing human rights through national policies and programs.

Type
JLME Supplement
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 39 , Issue S1 , Spring 2011 , pp. 81 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Steiner, H. J., Alston, P., and Goodman, R., International Human Rights in Context: Law, Politics, Morals (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Gostin, L. and Mann, J. M., “Towards the Development of a Human Rights Impact Assessment for the Formulation and Evaluation of Public Health Policies,” Health and Human Rights 1 (1994): 58–80.Google Scholar
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Assembly Resolution 2200A (XXI), 993 U.N.T.S. 3, December 16, 1966, entered into force January 3, 1976; Toe-Be, B., The Right to Health as a Human Right in International Law (Antwerpen, Groningen, Oxford: Intersentia/Hart, 1999).Google Scholar
London, L., “What Is a Human-Rights Based Approach to Health and Does It Matter?,” Health and Human Rights 10 (2008): 65–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yamin, A. E. and Gloppen, S., eds., Litigating Health Rights: Can Courts Bring More Justice to Health? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, forthcoming 2011); Gauri, V. and Brinks, D. M., eds., Courting Social Justice: Judicial Enforcement of Social and Economic Rights in the Developing World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byrne, I., “Enforcing the Right to Health: Innovative Lessons from Domestic Courts,” in Clapham, A. and Robinson, M., eds., Realizing the Right to Health (Zurich: Rüffer & Rub, 2009): Langford, M., “Domestic Adjudication of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: A Socio-Legal Survey,” SUR - International Journal of Human Rights 11 (2010); Yamin, A. E. and Parra-Vera, O., “How Do Courts Set Health Policy? The Case of the Colombian Constitutional Court,” PLoS Medicine 6, no. 2 (2009).Google Scholar
Gruskin, S., Mills, E. J., and Tarantola, D., “History, Principles, and Practice of Health and Human Rights,” The Lancet 370 (2007): 449–454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gostin, L. O., The AIDS Pandemic: Complacency, Injustice and Unfulfilled Expectations (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Yamin, A. E., “Not Just a Tragedy: Access to Medications as a Right under International Law,” Boston University International Law Journal 21 (2003): 325–371; Novogrodsky, N. “The Duty of Treatment: Human Rights and the HIV/AIDS Pandemic,” Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal 12 (2009): 1–61.Google Scholar
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, HIV/AIDS and Human Rights: International Guidelines (New York and Geneva: United Nations, 1998); U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Substantive Issues Arising in the Implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: General Comment No. 14, U.N. Doc. E/C.12/2000/4 (August 11, 2000); Interim Report of the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the Right of Everyone to Enjoy the Highest Attainable Standard of Physical and Mental Health, Mr.Hunt, Paul, UN Doc. A/58/427 (Oct. 10, 2003).Google Scholar
Minister of Health & Others v. Treatment Action Campaign & Others, 2002 (5) SA 721 (CC).Google Scholar
Kapczynski, A. and Berger, J. M., “The Story of the TAC Case: The Potential and Limits of Socio-economic Rights Litigation in South Africa,” in Hurwitz, D. R., Satterthwaite, M. L., and Ford, D. B., eds., Human Rights Advocacy Stories (New York: Foundation Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Heywood, M., “Current Developments Preventing Mother-to-Child Transmission in South Africa: Background, Strategies and Outcomes of the Treatment Action Campaign Case against the Minister of Health,” South African Journal on Human Rights 19 (2003): 278–315.Google Scholar
Hogerzeil, H. V., “Essential Medicines and Human Rights: What Can They Learn from Each Other?” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 84 (2006): 1–5; Pogge, T., “Montreal Statement on the Human Right to Essential Medicines,” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 16 (2007): 104–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forman, L., “Trade Rules, Intellectual Property, and the Right to Health,” Ethics & International Affairs 21 (2007): 337–357; Marks, S. P., “Access to Essential Medicines as a Component of the Right to Health,” in Clapham, A. and Robinson, M., eds., Realizing the Right to Health (Zurich: Rüffer & Rub, 2009).Google Scholar
Youde, J., “From Resistance to Receptivity: Transforming the HIV/AIDS Crisis into a Human Rights Issue,” in Bob, C., ed., The International Struggle for New Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Epstein, H., The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).Google Scholar
UN Special Rapporteur on the Highest Attainable Standard of Health, Promotion and Protection of Human Rights: Human Rights Questions, Including Alternative Approaches for Improving the Effective Enjoyment of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, U.N. Doc. A/61/338. ¶¶ 40, 47, September 13, 2006.Google Scholar
UNAIDS & Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Courting Rights: Case Studies in Litigating the Human Rights of People Living with HIV, Geneva, 2006.Google Scholar
Meier, B. M., “Employing Health Rights for Global Justice: The Promise of Public Health in Response to the Insalubrious Ramifications of Globalization,” Cornell International Law Journal 39 (2006): 711–777; Parmet, W. E., Populations, Public Health, and the Law (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
The World Bank, Improving Effectiveness & Outcomes for the Poor in Health, Nutrition & Population (Washington: World Bank, 2009).Google Scholar
Barak-Erez, D. and Gross, A., eds., Exploring Social Rights: Between Theory and Practice (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2007); Ferraz, O. L. M., “The Right to Health in the Courts of Brazil: Worsening Health Inequities?,” Health and Human Rights 11 (2009): 33–45; Bernier, L., “International Socio-Economic Human Rights: The Key to Global Health Improvement,” International Journal of Human Rights 14 (2010): 246–279.Google Scholar
Easterly, W, “Human Rights Are the Wrong Basis for Healthcare,” Financial Times, October 12, 2009.Google Scholar
Gloppen, S., “Litigation as a Strategy to Hold Governments Accountable for Implementing the Right to Health,” Health and Human Rights 10 (2008): 21–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bongaarts, J. and Over, M., “Public Health: Global HIV/AIDS Policy in Transition,” Science 328 (2010): 1359–1360; Johnson, K. M., Levy, A. R., Lima, V. D., and Hogg, R. S. et al., “Expanding Access to HAART: A Cost-Effective Approach for Treating and Preventing UTV” AIDS 24 (2010): 1929–1935.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrett, L. A., The Future of Foreign Assistance amid Global Economic and Financial Crisis: Advancing Global Health in the U.S. Development Agenda (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 2009); Granich, R., Crowley, S., Vitoria, M., and Smyth, C. et al., “Highly Active Antiretroviral Treatment as Prevention of HIV Transmission: Review of Scientific Evidence and Update,” Current Opinion in HIV and AIDS 5 (2010): 298–304; Karim, Q. A., Karim, S. S. A., Fröhlich, J. A., and Grobler, A. C. et al., “Effectiveness and Safety of Tenofovir Gel, an Antiretroviral Microbicide, for the Prevention of HIV Infection in Women,” Science 329 (2010): 1168–1174; Grand, R. M., Lama, J. R., Anderson, P. L., and McMahan, V et al., “Preexposure Chemoprophylaxis for HIV Prevention in Men Who Have Sex with Men,” New England Journal of Medicine (November 23, 2010).Google Scholar