Abstract – Effective access to justice against state and non-state actors in the Framework Convention on Global Health: A proposal

Martín Hevia, Carlos Herrera Vacaflor

Health and Human Rights 15/1

Published June 2013

Abstract

A Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH) seeks to have a profound, effective, and broad impact: bringing access to health rights to the largest global community possible. One of the main issues the FCGH will address is how to make the right to health justiciable. An FCGH must articulate functional remedies for violations of the right to health by state or non-state actors. This paper analyzes one approach to ensuring the recognition of the rights defended in a future FCGH. Following the incremental development approach inspired by the architecture of other successful framework convention protocols, we propose the inclusion of access to health justice guidelines in an FCGH. This proposal is based on the amparo remedy, a figure already extant in the legislation of several Latin American countries; since its incorporation, these countries have witnessed a significant increase in litigation defending health rights.  This is only one of many important advantages to broadly adopting guidelines based on the amparo remedy. The proposed guidelines would serve as a basic agreement on broad principles on access to health justice.