The Right to Health

The Right to Health

The right to life is a basic tenet of human rights. It follows that the
right to health, prevention of torture and human right abuse and
proper health care are fundamental to a good quality of life. Death
from denied access to health facilities and poverty is just as
unacceptable a violation of person’s rights to life as death from
torture or a death from squad bullet. In the public discussion, there
has –understandably perhaps – been a separate emphasis in the
human right movement on such violations as torture, extrajudicial
executions, disappearance, and political rights. We seek to
emphasize the inseparability of all human rights, including the right
to health.

The relationship between health and human rights not only
embraces civil and political rights but the right to affordable,
accessible, and culturally acceptable health care services. This
right is persistently threatened by economic, political, social and
other environmental inequities. In many countries under oppressive
regimes and military occupation, like the situation in Palestine,
numerous additional obstacles to health exist: a lack of freedom of
movement – with military checkpoints impeding ambulances and
health care professionals, the movement of medical supplies, and
residents from accessing local health centers. Furthermore,
crowded living conditions, a lack of access to clean water, and
ineffective sanitation threaten the health of Palestinians.

Research and capacity building in regions where human rights
respects are highly needed is an important first step in
understanding and intervening in the psychosocial degenerative
effects of human rights abuses. Human rights abuses are,
however, always human behaviors that are inflicted upon human
beings who suffer physically and psychologically.

We believe that cultivating a comprehensive approach to human
rights is a developmental process. Such process is established
through the presence of social justice, equity, community
development and social change, the right to health and education,
and the right to live in peace and dignity. This process requires
people’s involvement in decisions related to their lives, as well as
examining the positive and negative conditions that promote human
rights and human rights abuses.

We look at the process of choosing a specific human right to focus
on at the exclusion of others could be defined as a selective
approach to human rights. Such a process concentrates on
improving the conditions of one aspect of human rights in a
community. Alternatively, comprehensive human rights focuses on
the process of empowerment and increasing control over all
influences that impact the basic rights, selective human rights
assumes that political rights create and ensure control over human
rights promotion maintained by politicians. This does not mean,
however that selective human rights are not crucial in addressing
certain sufferings such as torture. However, by only addressing
those apparent abuses, the fear that we constantly risk attempt to
address the end result of the problem instead of addressing the
root causes of and/or the social conditions underlying these
abuses.