A/HRC/40/29 domestic legal order, appropriate means of redress, or remedies, must be available to any aggrieved individual or group, and appropriate means of ensuring governmental accountability must be put in place”.27 55. In People’s Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India and others, the Supreme Court of India examined petitions regarding the occurrence of starvation-related deaths despite an excess of grain in Government reserves for official times of famine. The Court ruled the right to life, enshrined in article 21 of the Constitution, had been jeopardized as a result of the failure of food schemes. The Court ordered that the famine code be implemented, that ration shops provide grain at a set price to families living below the poverty line, that ration cards for free grain be granted to all persons without means of support, that publicity campaigns be established and that the state Governments progressively implement midday meal schemes in schools. The case had a massive impact: it opened a forum for debate on larger issues of starvation and undernourishment in India, mobilized larger movements for the right to food, prompted Government action and set lines of accountability at the regional and national levels. 28 56. In South Africa, a Government policy restricted the ability of doctors at public hospitals and clinics other than designated research and training sites to prescribe a drug reducing mother-to-child transmission of HIV, even where it was medically indicated and adequate facilities existed for testing and counselling pregnant women. In Minister of Health and Others v. Treatment Action Campaign, in 2002, the Constitutional Court found that that policy fell short of compliance with the right of everyone to have access to healthcare services under the Constitution. The Court ordered the Government to review its policy on access to HIV/AIDS treatments, with a view to extending the availability of Nevirapine – an anti-retroviral drug for HIV-positive pregnant women that could avert tens of thousands of unnecessary infections and deaths – to hospitals and clinics; and to take reasonable measures to extend the testing and counselling facilities throughout the public health sector.29 57. In a positive step towards the recognition and protection of the rights of HIVpositive women in Africa, in 2014 the Supreme Court of Namibia upheld the previous ruling by the High Court that medical personnel at public hospitals violated the rights of three HIV-positive women when it sterilized them without their consent. Forced and coerced sterilization is a common problem in many countries. Women who have been forcibly sterilized are often stigmatized and face a lifetime of public contempt. Although the Court did not find sufficient evidence to determine that the women had been sterilized due to their HIV-positive status, it determined that the women had proven that they had not given proper consent to the sterilization procedures. The Court then emphasized that “individual autonomy and self-determination are the overriding principles towards which our jurisprudence should move in this area of the law” and declared that “the patient has the final say in deciding whether or not she should undergo an elective medical procedure”.30 G. Role of national human rights institutions 58. National human rights institutions have a critical role to play in empowering people in terms of the realization of their economic, social and cultural rights by raising awareness, monitoring implementation and providing technical advice, capacity-building and avenues for remedy and redress. As the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights pointed out, this potential has yet to be fully exploited as many such institutions lack the mandate or capacity to do so or accord low priority to these rights. 31 27 28 29 30 31 14 Ibid., para. 2. OHCHR, Who will be accountable? Human Rights and the Post-2015 Development Agenda, p. 40. See also OHCHR, Frequently Asked Questions on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, p. 31. Government of the Republic of Namibia v. L.M. and others, case No. SA 49/2012, [2014] NASC 19, paras. 105–106. General comment No. 10 (1998) on the role of national human rights institutions in the protection of economic, social and cultural rights, para. 3.