2 - The Normative Contours of a Vulnerability- and Equity-Oriented Right to Health

Summary

This chapter provides an overview of the public health–inspired conceptualisation of the right to health and its correlative obligations in international and European human rights law. It demonstrates a certain engagement of international bodies with the protection of health while also arguing that a structural and conceptual bias against socioeconomic rights has posed an obstacle for the universal protection and accountability of the right to health of vulnerable people, a category to which irregular migrants belong. For instance, the analysis reveals a disjunct between regulatory obligations and high-threshold rights within the European Convention on Human Rights framework on the one hand and the targeting of comprehensive care while respecting non-discrimination in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’ typologies system on the other. The chapter concludes with a close examination of the conceptual and normative value of vulnerability in human rights theory and practice, which should also apply in relation to the implementation of an equity-based right to health.