Global accountability to human rights in healthcare

Abstract

Human rights are fundamental rights that are inherently essential, with accountability being a crucial element in protecting individuals’ rights when they have been infringed. Human rights accountability has encountered many challenges, including apertures and lack of clarity across regional and State measures, with innumerable differences throughout the various bodies of international law and legal jurisprudence. The right to health is a fundamental human right that is guaranteed through most international instruments, but oftentimes lacks the necessary protections at the State level due to lack of global health governance, health inequalities and distinctions in the application of health laws across judicial systems. This article discusses: (1) healthcare as a fundamental human right guaranteed under international instruments; (2) States as duty-bearers within regional mechanisms to uphold the right to healthcare; (3) an approach to accountability, through an examination of legal jurisprudence within the regional human rights mechanisms of the Inter-American System of Human Rights, European Court of Human Rights, and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights; and (4) the role of non-State actors in complying with human rights standards. Additionally, this article seeks to examine the concept of human rights accountability of states, as primary duty-bearers, and the role of non-State actors in conjunction with global health governance, which unconsciously denotes the inequalities in healthcare protections within certain societies. Further, the article notes the disconnect in human rights protection in healthcare and the experiential crises that exist therein.