A/HRC/7/11 page 25 communities and populations; and includes a situational analysis. Before finalization, key elements of the draft plan must be subject to an impact assessment and the final plan must include certain crucial features. 108. These (and other) features are not just a matter of health good practice, sound management, justice, equity or humanitarianism. They are a matter of international legal obligation. Whether or not the obligations are properly discharged should be subject to review by an appropriate accountability mechanism. F. The right to health helps to establish a health system in the same way as the right to a fair trial helps to establish a court system 109. How does it help to recognize that the right to the highest attainable standard of health underpins and reinforces the features and measures required to establish an effective, integrated, accessible health system? One way of answering this question is by using the analogy of a court system and the right to a fair trial. 110. Just as every State must have a health system, it must also have an effective court system. The key features of an effective court system include independent, impartial judges. A case must come to trial without undue delay. All parties to a case must be given an opportunity to give their version of events, call witnesses and make a legal argument. In serious cases, an impecunious defendant must be provided with legal aid. In some cases, an interpreter must be provided. The judge must give reasons for his or her decision. There must be an appeal process in case the judge makes a mistake. Usually, the hearing should be in public. 111. The human right to a fair trial requires a court system to have all these features. Significantly, many of these features have major budgetary implications. 112. States have designed a range of mechanisms and measures to ensure that these features of a court system are available in law and fact. For example, judicial independence must be protected by a carefully constructed process of judicial appointment and dismissal and by judges enjoying reasonable terms and conditions of employment. 113. Of course, a State could construct an effective court system without any express reference to the right to a fair trial. Indeed, policymakers in the Ministry of Justice could construct an effective court system without even thinking about human rights. And if they do, so be it. What is important is that there is an effective court system, with the key human rights features, dispensing justice without fear or favour. 114. But the record shows that many court systems do not possess all the key human rights features and do not dispense justice. In practice, some right-to-a-fair-trial features are overlooked or compromised. In this context, human rights play a number of important roles, including the following two. 115. First, the right to a fair trial provides guidance to policymakers in the Ministry of Justice. Human rights law reminds them what are the key features of a court system that must always be respected. Also, if officials in the Ministry of Justice are under political pressure to introduce unfair trials, they can explain that the State has minimum, legally binding, human rights