This chapter describes the rights-based approach to health. This approach is based on the human right to health but looks beyond that right to focus on cross-cutting human rights principles for ensuring that health outcomes are achieved in a manner consistent with the foundational values of human rights. The rights-based approach to health is thus a key strategy in the development and implementation of health policy – based on principles of participation, equality and non-discrimination, transparency, and accountability. Examining these human rights principles, the rights-based approach has developed from rhetoric to practice, guiding health policy so as to provide for the highest attainable level of health for all. Nevertheless, the rights-based approach to health faces challenges as health and human rights address a larger global health landscape of state and non-state actors and find new meaning under the Sustainable Development Goals.
Despite repeated attempts to eliminate statelessness and to provide for the protection of stateless persons, international law has not been able to provide an adequate response to these problems. In the Middle East the problem has continued to grow as social and political change pushes people into becoming stateless and fails to provide those who are stateless with adequate protection. The treaties that have attempted to prevent this practice have failed. At the same time the lex specialis aimed at protecting people from the consequences of statelessness have also failed. The result has been a lacuna in the protection of stateless persons. This article suggests that a step towards filling this gap might be made by applying general international human rights law to protect stateless persons.
This contribution argues that despite the fact that the United Nations Refugee Convention does not cover persons subject to climate change induced displacement, these people should be protected by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This is the case because UNHCR's own Executive Committee has incorporated the broader African definition of a refugee that does include climate refugees into their protection mandate. We therefore conclude that UNHCR should exercise protection activities over climate refugees to be consistent with the mandate given to this United Nations programme by international law. To arrive at this conclusion we first briefly introduce the question about the protection of climate change induced displacement in the social science debate. We examine the legal definitions of refugees, agreeing with the most common interpretations of both United Nations and regional instruments. We then indicate how, by expressly extending its mandate, UNHCR itself has taken on the responsibility for the protection of people subject to climate change induced displacement. Finally, we report how, despite this mandate, UNHCR is still refusing to exercise its mandate properly, and that if it were to do so, a significant step could be taken in ensuring the protection of people subject to climate change induced displacement.
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