The broad effort to improve population health and its distribution through the international legal framework of human rights is one of the most promising movements in international health. What I shall refer to as a “human rights–based approach” (see “Key Features of a Rights-Based Approach to Health”) has several great strengths. It establishes specific governmental accountabilities for promoting population health by articulating a right to health and related rights. It broadens the arena in which health is pursued by including various rights to a broad range of environmental, legal, cultural, and social determinants of health. It emphasizes the importance of setting specific goals and targets for achieving the rights that bear on health and then monitoring and evaluating progress toward those goals and targets. It insists on good governance, and so it stresses the importance of transparency and inclusion or participation in efforts to secure these rights. In all these respects, there is considerable agreement between the practical implications of the account of just health we have been examining and the requirements of this international legal framework.

KEY FEATURES OF A RIGHTS-BASED APPROACH TO HEALTH

In what follows, I shall understand a rights-based approach to health to include these key elements, adapted from Gruskin et al. (forthcoming):

1. Stakeholders, including government officials, recognize the legal imperative to respect, protect, and fulfill human rights relevant to health and to the delivery of health care.

2. […]