Essay HCM515 – Health Law and Ethics – Human Rights Discourse Within Global Health Ethics – Law Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

Task:

Introduction

•  In 1945, the United Nations (UN) was created, in part to reaffirm faith in “fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small” (United Nations 1945: 2).
•  The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights was the first explicit human rights instrument of the contemporary system of international human rights law, articulating a broad range of rights to be protected inpursuance of the core human rights values of inherent dignity and equal rights (United Nations 1948).
•  International human rights law recognizes several categories of rights, including:

A. civil and political rights (including rights to vote, to be free from torture, to have equality before the law, and to have free expression, movement and association)

B. and economic, social and cultural rights (including rights to social security, work, education and participation in cultural life).

•  Despite these categories, within international human rights law, all humanrights are understood to be indivisible, interrelated and interdependent (United Nations 1993).
• Since 1948, these rights have been developed and expanded in multiple human rights treaties, resolutions and declarations, necessitating the development of a comprehensive set of international institutions to monitor and interpret these rights, and prompting the development of regional human rights systems in Africa, the Americas and Europe. These developments have seen human rights become the fastest-growing field in international law (Mutua 2001), with international human rights viewed ashaving become “constitutive elements of modern and ‘civilized’ statehood” (Risse et al. 1999: 234).

B) The right to health

•  The right to health has been protected in international law since the inception of the UN.
•  The 1946 Constitution of the World Health Organization recognizes enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health as a fundamental right of every human being without distinction, and recognizes that governments are responsible “for the health of their peoples which can be fulfilled only by the provision of adequate health and social measures” (WHO 1948: 2).

C) Human rights and global health

•  Human rights and the right to health make a distinctive contribution to efforts to achieve global health equity, through:

A. the normative specificity of the right to health and its legally binding nature,
B. its rhetorical impact and potential to empower rights-holders,
C. accountability mechanisms such as UN country reporting, litigation, and advocacy,

D) How global health ethics advances human rights.

•  Whereas the section above has considered the contributions of human rights to global health, we now reflect on links to global health ethics.
•  We argue that the two fields are synergistic and their contributions taken together stand to offer greater weight than either alone (Nixon and Forman 2008). Nonetheless we acknowledge that there are rare instances where the interests of the two fields may be viewed as in conflict.
•  A useful starting point is to examine the ethical underpinnings of human rights. At the root of human rights is respect for the worth and equal value of every human life, which may also be framed as the ethical principle of respect for dignity.