Interpreting the international right to health in a human rights-based approach to health

This article tracks the shifting place of the international right to health, and human rights-based approaches to health, in the scholarly literature and United Nations. From 1993?1994, the focus began to move from the right to health towards human rights-based approaches to health, including human rights guidance adopted by UN agencies in relation to specific health issues. There is a compelling case for a human rights-based approach to health, but it runs the risk of playing down the right to health, as evidenced by an examination of some UN human rights guidance. The right to health has important and distinctive qualities that are not provided by other rights, consequently playing down the right to health can diminish human rights-based approaches to health, as well as the right to health itself. Because General Comments, the reports of UN Special Rapporteurs and UN agencies? guidance are exercises in interpretation, the author discusses methods of legal interpretation. He suggests the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights permits distinctive interpretative methods within the boundaries established by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. He calls for the right to health to be placed explicitly at the center of a human rights-based approach and interpreted in accordance with public international, and international human rights, law.