Globalization, development and health: Realizing the right to health through the right to development

Despite the vast literature linking economic development with rising living standards and associated improvements in public health, the connections between the right to health and the right to development are rarely appreciated. Without development, poor countries will be unable to progressively realize their obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and will fail to increase the maximum available resources at their disposal to realize the right to health. However, in an era of neoliberal globalization, states face hard constraints on their ability to implement the social development policies that public health scholars have long found essential for building the requisite public health systems to provide for health.

Drawing on international legal analysis, this research finds that the individual right to health can most effectively be realized through the collective right to development, as codified in the 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development and subsequent interpretations. As a ‘vector' of rights, the right to development both encompasses and necessitates the right to health. Because economic development is inherently societal, a collective right to development is essential to provide the public goods necessary to build sustainable public health systems.

This research concludes that states can use the collective right to development as a tool to protect public health systems during development processes. Employing health rights in the context of a right to development will allow states to reject development policies that may be harmful to the public's health and to challenge international financial institutions' insalubrious development mandates.