of Non-Communicable Diseases
THE R IGHT TO H EALTH
Health insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, the pharmaceutical industry as well as the tobacco, food and beverage indus-tries all exert a tremendous influence and power over our health and well-being. This is why there has been an increasing call on governments to submit these actors to tighter rules. To bring this back to human rights law:
under the right to health, States are under a ›duty to protect‹ the health and well-being of individuals against the human rights violations of non-state actors. General Comment No. 14 provides many important examples of when the State violates the right to health when failing to regulate private actors:
80 Consumers International/World Obesity Forum (2014).
81 Sunstein (2014).
82 Magnusson/Patterson (2014).
83 Taylor (2015).
»[…] failure to regulate the activities of individuals, groups or corporations so as to prevent them from violating the right to health of others; the failure to protect con-sumers and workers from practices detrimental to health, e.g. by employers and manufacturers of medicines or food; the failure to discourage production, marketing and consumption of tobacco, narcotics and other harmful substances; the failure to protect women against violence or to prosecute perpetrators; the failure to discour-age the continued observance of harmful traditional medical or cultural practices;
and the failure to enact or enforce laws to prevent the pollution of water, air and soil by extractive and manufacturing industries.«84
Subsequently, the question arises whether private actors also carry moral or even legal responsibilities under human rights law. Whilst recognizing the primary obligation to protect of States, the human rights framework recog-nizes that the protection and promotion of health involves a shared respon-sibility, requiring a multi-stakeholder approach. General Comment No. 14 recognizes that:
»[…] all members of society – individuals, including health professionals, families, local communities, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, civil so-ciety organizations, as well as the private business sector – have responsibilities re-garding the realization of the right to health […].«85 [emphasis added, B.T.]
Hence, many different actors have responsibilities under the right to health – setting aside the question of whether such responsibilities are legal or moral in character. Potentially thus, the food and beverage producers them-selves, although strictly speaking not legally bound by the human rights treaties, have indirect responsibilities under human rights law to ensure the quality and healthiness of their products.86
84 E/C.12/2000/4, 11 August 2000, para. 51.
85 Ibid., para. 42.
86 See, for example, Corporations in the Global Food System and Human Rights (2014).
6. C
ONCLUSIONSThe broad understanding of the right to health is important when it comes to NCD prevention and control. It mandates that attention should be di-rected not only at providing equitable and inclusive access to healthcare and medicines, but also at securing a range of determinants to health. In-vestments in treatment should be matched by laws and policies targeting the whole population, aimed at empowering individuals to lead healthier lives.87
While the right to health framework is not very specific in regulating NCDs, it offers a set of principles or guideposts that may guide the field, that have been discussed in this contribution. Given the striking nature of the NCD pandemic, it is worth paying more attention to this framework.
Potentially, it offers a robust set of norms and standards that define the le-gal obligations of governments, while adding accountability mechanisms to traditional public health strategies.88
R
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