Access to Medicine as a Human Right
Access to Medicine as a Human Right
This chapter begins with a background note on international human rights law and the right to health — the most commonly mentioned basis for a right to access to medicine — as well as human rights aspects of intellectual property. It then discusses the interpretation of human rights conventions. The rights at issue are closely connected to the notion of economic, social, and cultural rights. Some authors argue that this category of human rights is of doubtful legal relevance, an objection that is treated under the heading of ‘justiciability’. The chapter also examines whether pharmaceutical companies are directly bound by these rights and whether the WTO is bound by human rights law. Finally, the right to access to medicine is discussed in detail, proceeding in the order of the sources recognized by international law as stated in Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ): international conventions, customary international law, and general principles of law.
Keywords: access to medicine, customary international law, human rights, right to health, economic, social, and cultural rights, justiciability
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
