The Right To Life And The Right To Health, In Particular The Obligation To Reduce Child Mortality

Sixty years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the holding of a joint workshop on the right to life comes at a particularly suitable moment. This chapter refers to some key factors shaping the obligations of States parties in relation to the right to health. To illustrate the practice of monitoring the right to health by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), the chapter briefly mentions a few situations that were raised in the State reporting procedure in 2008. Questions asked by the Committee focused on what accounts for the high rate of child mortality in India, and how the State party demonstrated that every effort had been made to use all resources at its disposition to satisfy the minimum obligations regarding the right to health, and what the State party was doing to reduce the extremely high rate of girl infanticide. Keywords: CESCR; child mortality; girl infanticide; right to health; right to life; State reporting procedure; States parties; Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)