A Thematic Guide to Documents on Health and Human Rights

This publication is the second volume of "Thematic Human Rights Guides" published under the auspices of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. The aim of the "Guides," as the title implies, is to facilitate the use of international human rights standards by their systematic presentation. Rather than reproducing full texts of various instruments, substantive standards are grouped according to subject-matter in order to enable users to quickly and easily locate the topic they may be looking for. A detailed index, with references to the many international instruments which address the same issue, reinforces this thematic approach. The choice of human rights and health for the second volume in this series highlights the aim of the "Guides": to map out the entire range of human rights and fundamental freedoms as they relate to a specific topic. The sheer size of this volume illustrates the number and variety of human rights standards relevant for health. Many of these standards have been generated by organizations dealing with health rather than human rights, and quite a few are found under medical ethics rather than human rights. Subsuming medical ethics under international human rights law is a novel development, pioneered by the Council of Europe. Elsewhere, the two fields remain separate and the publication of this "Guide" is intended to overcome this separation. Documents have been included which provide an understanding of human rights within the health profession (such as guidance to medical doctors with regard to abortion adopted by the International Medical Association) and those human rights safeguards that have been elaborated to prevent abuses byhealth professionals (such as those concerning mental health). All of these standards provide a substantive background for inter-professional dialogue on the evolving understanding of human rights. "A Thematic Guide to Documents on Health and Human Rights" reflects the full range of issues encompassed by human rights and health. Besides the right to health, a wide range of rights and freedoms can be - and is - affected by the health sector. Priority has been accorded to the crucial human rights safeguards, namely those specifying protection against undue limitations or restrictions upon human rights. Much as with any other human rights topic, those safeguards are best developed for categories that are most vulnerable to denials and violations of their rights. Detainees, prisoners, victims of armed conflicts, children and the mentally ill thus figure prominently.