Health and human rights Global and European Perspectives

'Health and human rights' is an important dimension of international and European human rights and health law. It is multi-disciplinary, engaging scholars and practitioners of public health and medicine, as well as legal scholars and human rights lawyers. Human rights law brings a new, and often more international, as well as a moral dimension to existing legal analyses of health issues. This is essential in an increasingly interconnected and internationalised world, where health concerns are omnipresent and can no longer be addressed solely at a domestic level. This book focuses on the legal interfaces between 'health' and 'human rights', taking both a global as well as a European approach. Globally, there are tremendous challenges when it comes to the protection of collective and individual health. Such challenges include weak (primary) healthcare systems, the spread of infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, and the increase of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), as well as the health effects of air pollution and climate change. In such settings, human rights can, potentially, play a powerful and crucial role in protecting the rights of vulnerable individuals. The European context is, to some extent, a region sui generis, not only in terms of health issues and health outcomes, but also from a political and legal perspective. The authoritative case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) of the Council of Europe has increasingly touched upon health-related issues. The same can be said about the treaties and case law of the European Union. Health and Human Rights brings together contributions from human rights and health law experts from three different countries in Northern Europe. The chapters give a rich account of the legal and interdisciplinary aspects and perspectives related to 'health and human rights'. This book is of interest to lecturers, students, practitioners and law- and policymakers and offers up-to-date analyses of crucial human rights issues in modern healthcare, practices and regulations in Europe and beyond.

Brigit Toebes is an Associate Professor and Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the Department of International Law of the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), where she teaches public international law, international humanitarian law, and human rights law. Her specialist areas are human rights, in particular economic, social and cultural rights, the definition of health as a right, the broader interfaces between health and human rights, (international) health law, medical ethics, international humanitarian law, and public international law more generally. She has written widely in these areas, including books and articles in leading human rights and health law journals.She also advises public health experts on how to embed human rights in their research and public health policies (eg WHO, OSF). She is an editor of the "Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights" (NQHR), and a Board Member of the International Federation of Health and Human Rights Organizations (IFHHRO). She is affiliated to the University of Aberdeen as an Honorary Lecturer. Due to her stay abroad (Aberdeen and Copenhagen) she maintains a wide and interdisciplinary network in the field of human rights and health law.