News & Events

  • In 2011, Equal in Rights published “A Guide to Costing Human Rights” by Victor Steenbergen. This paper provides an overview of all the central concepts and definitions relevant for costing human rights policy.
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  • In 2011, Equal in Rights published “ Frontloading Human Rights: A Conceptual Framework for Building Budget and Realising rights” by Victor Steenbergen. This paper defines all the key concepts and provides an understanding of their relevance for Frontloading Human Rights.
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  • The International Human Rights Internship Program (IHRIP), in collaboration with the International Budget Partnership (IBP), implemented a ten-day West African Regional Learning Program on Human Rights Budget Work in Monrovia, Liberia from July 4th to July 13th, 2011.
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  • The Center for Women’s Global Leadership published its report on“Maximum Available Resources and Human Rights” in June 2011. This report examines a number of ways that governments can access financial resources in order to fulfill their obligation to use “maximum available resources” to realize ESC rights.
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  • “ No Protection for Children in the Budget 2011-2012” provides an analysis from a child rights’ perspective of the allocations for children (Budget for Children—BfC) in the 2011-12 Indian Union budget. 
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  • In December 2010, The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights in an article, "Austerity Budgets Will Cause Further Child Poverty", recently said that political priorities and budget allocations are the principal reasons for the large differences in child poverty rates among European countries, and between those countries in similar economic situations. 
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  • In mid-2009 the International Budget Partnership (IBP) released “It’s Our Money. Where’s It Gone?”, a documentary film on the work of one of its partners, MUHURI (Muslims for Human Rights).  MUHURI involves communities directly in monitoring expenditure of the government’s Constituency Development Fund (CDF) in Mombasa, Kenya.“
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  • In early 2010 IHRIP and the International Budget Partnership (IBP) produced “Reading the books: Government budgets and the right to education” that looks at elements of the right to education and where these might be found in a government’s budget; a government’s human rights obligations and questions these raise about a government’s budget; a process for using a rights framework to analyze a government’s education budget; and a short discussion of costing related to the right to education.
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Important court cases PDF Print E-mail

relating governments’ budgets to the right to health

 

Decisions from courts are important not simply for the parties involved, but because they help shape our understanding of specific rights and the related government obligations.  The following are two key decisions affecting the right to health.

  • The case Abel Montenegro Velásquez v ISSSTESON (or Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado de Sonora)—the federal agency responsible for providing health services to public servants—focuses on the right to access health care in Mexico.  ISSSTESON denied health services to Abel Montenegro Velázquez, a public servant of the state of Sonora, and his family under a provision in Article 6 of the institution’s internal regulations that excludes individuals with preexisting conditions.  Sonora Ciudadana A.C. and Fundar-Centro de Análisis e Investigación, took Mr. Montenegro’s case to the Mexican Supreme Court, and in March 2009, the Court ruled that Article 6 was unconstitutional.  After nearly 11 years of struggle, ISSSTESON recognized that Abel Montenegro Velázquez and his family had the right to access health services.

  • The Mariela C. Viceconte v. Ministry of Health and Social Action case in Argentina, the first ruling for which was in 1998, focused on the government’s responsibility to provide a vaccine to combat hemorrhagic fever.  While much of that case did not directly involve the government’s budget, when the government failed to comply with the court’s initial orders, the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) went back to the court with figures showing that adequate funds were available in the budget.  At this point the court ordered the budget funds for the vaccine to be frozen, to ensure they were not spent on other things.  More information on this case is available in Circle of Rights (p. 422) and Dignity Counts (p. 41). 

  • The most well-known right to health and government budgets case is Soobramoney v. Minister of Health (Kwazulu-Natal), which focused on the rights to health care and to life in the South African Constitution.  The case primarily focused on a hospital’s guidelines for granting or denying access to dialysis treatment and whether those guidelines violated constitutional guarantees.  However, the court made explicit mention of the government’s health budget, citing limited resources and the need to set priorities in the expenditure of those resources.  The court said it would not interfere with priorities set by the executive, provided those priorities were reasonable and were applied fairly and reasonably.