Annals of Health Law - Vol 23 Issue 1

MDG 5, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND MATERNAL HEALTH IN AFRICA frameworks with the tenor of the obligations they voluntarily assumed under international law. To hope that the war against maternal or any other genre of health can be won without employing the armamentarium of human rights is comparable to the inherent foolishness in assuming that salvation (in the realm of Christianity) can be attained without fully subscribing to Biblical teachings on morally upright life. Sadly, such convoluted thinking has characterized responses to health challenges in most countries in Africa, and is the prime reason for the dismal state of the health of mothers and others in the region. The question, then, becomes, what does a human rights approach to tackling health challenges mean?

In a related work, this author defines the approach in terms of integrating
human rights into health systems, meaning:
Positioning human rights as an important component of decisions relating
to governance, financing and delivery of health services. From policy
formulation stages, through allocatory decisions, down to service
delivery, priority is given to strategies that has the greatest potential to
yield the best possible outcome for everyone, with preference given to
the most marginalized and vulnerable recipient of services. It is de facto
operationalization of the right to health, putting concrete measures in
place to ensure the full realization of the right for everyone, not just a
select few.190

Valuable insights on how to go about implementing this requirement can be gleaned from the provisions of international and regional human rights instruments as well as the jurisprudence and interpretive statements of the instruments’ implementing bodies.

The most widely ratified international legal framework on the right to health, the ICESCR, sets the stage by requiring States Parties to “recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”191 The ICESCR also requires States Parties to ensure the “reduction of the stillbirth-rate and of infant mortality and for the healthy development of the child”192 as well as “creation of conditions which would assure to all medical service and medical attention in the event of sickness.”193 Although the ICESCR does not expound on the specific

190. See Nnamuchi, Health and Millennium Development Goals in Africa, supra note 182.

191. ICESCR, supra note 188; see also The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, adopted June 27, 1981, OAU Doc. CAB/LEG/67/3 rev. 5, 21 I.L.M. 58 (1982) available at http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/z1afchar.htm. Article 16 contains a similar provision.