Is Health Care a Human Right?

global-healthcare3As Congress enters the final stretch in pushing forward a health care reform bill, I have been struck by the fact that during the ongoing debate very few people seem to pose the question of whether access to health care constitutes a human right.  Yet, in many countries around the world, this perspective forms the starting point of their national debates—and this consensus inevitably directs their public policy on universal health care. 

For example, while in Peru I received a grant from the Ford Foundation to conduct research on the right to mental health for survivors of the country’s internal armed conflict.  In the course of the study, I interviewed many government officials, advocates from non-governmental organizations and ordinary citizens.  None of these people questioned the basic premise of my study which was that health is a human right, as enshrined in international treaties such as the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). 

Article 12 of the ICESCR provides that “The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.” The Covenant has been ratified by 160 countries in the world, but not the United States.  The 1946 Constitution of the World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes that the right to health is a fundamental right “without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.”  Significantly, the United Nations General Assembly (composed of representatives from 192 member countries adopted a resolution in 2003 reaffirming the right to health.

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Truth and Reconciliation, Stories from the Diaspora

TRC_Report_coverSeveral months ago I blogged about the situation of Liberians who fled their country for the United States (but who did not receive official status as refugees) and who have lived here for years in a “temporary” status, while it remained unsafe to return to Liberia. As I explained in those posts, these US residents face yearly the prospect of deportation to Liberia, unless Congress acts to pass legislation allowing them to stay permanently.  Last year the crisis was once again temporarily resolved by President Obama’s one-year extension of protection. It’s unclear whether any permanent status for this group is on the horizon, as legislation on the issue seems to be, at this time, stalled in committee in both the Senate and theHouse, so I may be posting about this again next spring.

Anyway, if you followed those posts with any interest, or if you are generally interested in the experience of refugees, then you may want to review the recently-released report from The Advocates for Human Rights, entitled A House with Two Rooms: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia Diaspora Project.  (Confession: as previously disclosed, I worked for the Advocates during and after law school, and I think it’s a terrific organization.)

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Who Are Our People?

picresized_1255928517_44f5eb317716ee226f9fe3075b925dd1You may have heard that the Del Rio, Texas school district is policing a bridge that crosses the border with Mexico. Children crossing the bridge to attend school in the morning have been given letters seeking verification of their residency and explaining that non-residents will be expelled.

When you live in walking distance from the US-Mexico border, Newsweek points out, “the distinction between the U.S. and Mexico can get blurry—often children will pay visits on the weekend to family members who reside in Mexico and cross the border again Monday morning to go to class.”  Indeed, given recent rates of deportation, it is not at all unlikely that some children have (deported) parents living on one side of the border, while their citizen or permanent resident parents reside in Texas.

The trouble is that some of the students, allegedly, were crossing from Mexico every day to attend class in Texas.   And although public schools in the U.S. are forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause from denying education to children on the basis of their immigration status, schools do, of course, have the legitimate right to verify students’ residency in the district.  As the superintendent of the Del Rio district states, “It’s very simple. If you reside in the district, you can go to school. . . . . Texas has the same residency issues not just with children from Mexico but with children from Louisiana, New Mexico, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.” (An attorney for the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund asks, “Why isn’t the school district setting up a roadblock on the east side of town to see if students are coming from an adjacent school district?”)

I read about the controversy on a number of different websites, and you can probably imagine the character of many of the comments.  But one particular exchange played into a question that I have become a little obsessed about recently:  who is an “American”?  Is an “American” identified by legal citizenship?  By something more?  By something different from that altogether?

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