A/HRC/27/31 15. The life-course approach to health recognizes the continuum from birth through childhood, adolescence and adulthood. This approach reflects the principle that care given to children during their first five years of life, or even that given to their mothers prior to their birth, will affect their immediate well-being and will have an impact on their health and development in later years.8 16. A multi-faceted response, which also addresses the broader risk factors and determinants of child mortality and morbidity, is required. 17. The response must give sustained consideration to the needs of society’s most disadvantaged and marginalized children and their families if improved and more equitable child health outcomes are to be achieved.9 III. A human rights-based approach 18. A human rights-based approach requires systematic attention to a range of human rights standards and principles. This approach is not only about achieving human rights goals and outcomes, but also about achieving them through a participatory, inclusive, nondiscriminatory, transparent and responsive process. 19. A human rights-based approach to reducing child mortality and morbidity requires the identification of relevant duty-bearers and rights-holders, and building the capacity of the former to fulfil their obligations, and of the latter to claim their rights relevant to child health and survival. In this, States and State actors hold the principal obligation. In the case of young children, parents and other caregivers and health-care workers can simultaneously be considered both duty-bearers and rights-holders, who may benefit from capacitybuilding to fulfil their duties and claim respect for the rights of the children they represent. 20. International human rights law includes fundamental obligations by States to address under-5 mortality and morbidity as part of their work to ensure the child’s right to the highest attainable standard of health and other related rights. It provides a legal framework for this work and a basis for accountability. A human rights-based approach requires systematic attention to human rights standards and principles in all aspects of policies and programmes. 21. A human rights-based approach to reducing child mortality and morbidity requires that States and other relevant stakeholders, including national human rights institutions and non-governmental organizations, take action at all levels to address the interlinked root causes of child mortality and morbidity. These root causes include poverty, malnutrition, gender inequality, harmful practices, violence, stigma, discrimination, unsafe households and environments, denial of the right to safe drinking water and sanitation, denial of the right to health, including lack of accessible, affordable and appropriate health services and medicines, late detection of childhood illnesses and denial of the right to education. Human rights standards and principles 22. The Convention on the Rights of the Child provides a holistic framework for reducing child mortality and morbidity, emphasizing health outcomes, goods and services, and highlighting the need to tackle the underlying determinants of health. 8 9 A/HRC/24/60. Ibid. 5