What Does the Right to Health Mean?

Abstract

Social rights, and the right to health in particular, are still criticised for the vagueness of their legal content. What does realising the right to health mean, and when does a State breach its obligations under human rights law? Little research has attempted to answer those questions and key actors such as judges, States, NGOs and individuals, continue to face a high degree of uncertainty. Clarification must be sought to improve the realisation of this right, but how? When human rights supervisory bodies evaluate the implementation of the right to health in their monitoring procedures, they must declare whether or not this right has been realised, and justify why. By consequence, their interpretation contributes to delineating the legal content of this right. To overcome the dearth of literature on the substance of the European Social Charter, this article will thus examine how its supervisory body, the European Committee of Social Rights, interprets the right to health in its reporting and complaints procedures.