A/HRC/4/28 page 7 political rights dimension of health, such as torture issues. In recent years, this focus has widened to encompass the right to the highest attainable standard of health. A few national medical associations, such as the British Medical Association, are also giving more attention to health and human rights. In 2006, the American Public Health Association held its annual meeting on “Public Health and Human Rights”. 15. Médecins Sans Frontières, Médecins du Monde, Partners in Health, Doctors for Global Health and similar organizations of health professionals are delivering health services to vulnerable individuals and communities in all regions of the world. Their practical, life-saving work is inspirational. Interestingly, their use of human rights varies a great deal. Some use human rights as an advocacy tool; others also use human rights as a way of formulating equitable health policies and programmes; while others seldom explicitly use human rights at all. The same can be said about organizations working in the field of development. CARE, for example, explicitly uses human rights in its health work. 16. Providing a bridge between many of these groups, the People’s Health Movement has recently launched a global “Right to Health and Healthcare Campaign”.12 17. In conclusion, space constraints permit only this brief, incomplete sketch of some recent developments concerning civil society, health and human rights. The civil society component of the health and human rights movement is much more dynamic today than it was only a few years ago. Although more dynamic than before, civil society’s recognition of health issues as human rights issues remains uneven: strong in some countries, tenuous in others, and non-existent in many. There is an increasing recognition of the role of the right to health within the health and human rights movement. Nonetheless, civil society within the health and human rights movement could and should be doing much more, a crucial point that this section returns to shortly. C. Operationalizing the right to health: the Special Rapporteur’s contribution 18. General comment No. 14 greatly facilitates the design of rights-based approaches to health. Also, it underlines the links between the right to health and other human rights. However, although a ground-breaking document, the general comment was never intended to be a detailed guide to the operationalization of the right to health. As its name suggests, the general comment talks about the right to health in general terms. 19. Since 2003, the Special Rapporteur’s reports have tried to make the right to health more specific, accessible, practical and operational. These reports have not only drawn from general comment No. 14, but also the work of other United Nations human rights treaty bodies,13 as well as the practice of States, specialized agencies, courts and tribunals, non-governmental organizations and academics. Some of the Special Rapporteur’s reports have focused on specific elements of the right to health, such as access to medicines.14 Others have applied the right to health to specific issues, such as the health-related Millennium Development Goals.15 Others have looked at the right to health in relation to specific groups of people, such as those with mental disabilities.16 Also, country reports have applied the right to health to specific jurisdictions, such as Mozambique, Peru, Uganda, Romania and Sweden.17

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