Ethox Seminar - Why should the global and intergenerational challenges posed by infectious diseases reshape the duties to protect the human right to health?
Romina Rekers, University of Graz, Austria & FLACSO, Argentina
Tuesday, 11 February 2025, 10.30am to 12pm
This will be a hybrid seminar in the Big Data Institute, Lower Ground Seminar Rooms 0, or on Zoom (see joining link below).
Abstract
Climate-sensitive infectious diseases, pandemics and AMR are global and intergenerational challenges. Addressing these challenges requires different frameworks, goals, values and thresholds. In this presentation, I focus on the human rights framework. I explore why these three infectious disease challenges require a review of the duties to protect the human right to health. Despite its different formulations in international and national instruments and advocacy strategies, it is argued that the human right to health justifies two types of duties: 1) duties to protect against serious threats to health, and 2) duties to guarantee the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health. I explore why the transnational and intergenerational nature of these three challenges changes the scope of these two types of duties and the interpretation of the principles of progressivity and non-regression in the level of protection. In addition, I explore why moral, legal and advocacy practice needs to adapt if (intergenerational) resilience is adopted as a value for assessing the level of protection of the human right to health in these three cases.
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