JJUA54022U Health and Human Rights

Human rights and health law has developed in close collaboration after the Second World War. However, the area of ‘Health and Human Rights’ is still a new and developing area under international human rights law and international health law. In this course international human rights law is used as a framework to address a number of health and patients’ rights related issues.
These issues will be addressed from an international, but also from a national (comparative) perspective. In this way an overview is provided of the international and national legal perspectives involved in the health issue concerned.

Questions that will be addressed throughout the course are, for example: Which human rights are relevant for the protection of health and patients’ rights? Does a right to health entitle individuals to have optimal treatment?, Does a right to life embrace a ‘right to die’? ; To what extent have countries, including Denmark, enacted legislation that allows for euthanasia? Does a right to ‘reproductive health’ exist and what does it imply?; How can human rights law address the challenges provided by new technological developments as e.g. reproductive cloning and genetic testing?

The course will cover the following topics:
• Introduction to international human rights law;
• Introduction of the area of ‘health and human rights’;
• Economic, social and cultural rights and health: definition of a ‘right to health’, the principle of progressive realisation, and social determinants of health
• Civil and political human rights and health: the rights to life, the prohibition of torture, the right to privacy and family life, the right to health-related information, the right to self-determination in cases of euthanasia
• Reproductive health: abortion, sex selection, sex education, assisted reproduction services and other issues;
• Disability and health. Topics: disabled persons as a vulnerable group, the UN Disability Convention, the ‘social model’ of disability in relation to access to health care services.


Relevant case law of the European Court of Human Rights, The European Committee of Social Rights, the Human Rights Committee (HRC) and national courts will be included.