Global health, human rights and the challenge of neoliberal policies

Abstract

The right to health, which includes a right to healthcare and to social and other underlying determinants of health, is pro- tected in legally binding international human rights treaties and the majority of national constitutions. Yet this, as Chapman observes in her opening chapter, is little guarantee of the enjoyment of this fundamental human right. The cen- tral contention of Chapman’s analysis is that the displace- ment of the improvement of human welfare as a key policy goal in the post-war era by neoliberal ideology and the per- vasive accompanying belief amongst policy makers that mar- kets are the most appropriate basis for organizing economic and social life poses a ubiquitous and multifaceted threat to the enjoyment of the right to health, one to which the human rights community has, with some notable exceptions, failed to adequately respond. The first chapter introduces the historic evolution of the right to health, highlighting its conceptual origins, legal and interpretive development and evolving political, social and eco- nomic contexts. The following chapter comprises a particularly lucid and balanced discussion of how the right to health is to be interpreted. Across the four following chapters, the volume scrutinizes how neoliberalism has challenged the right to health at the global level and in many countries, as evidenced by the deleterious effects of the marketization of the healthcare sector, and the related reliance on the private sector to provide health- care, for research and development and to manufacture medi- cines. Globalization, the power differentials between high and low income countries and between the state and the private sector, and the role of international organizations including the World Bank and the World Trade Organization are highlighted as