Rationalising the Right to Health: Is Spain's Austere Response to the Economic Crisis Impermissible Under International Human Rights Law?
A. Nolan (ed.), Economic and Social Rights after the Global Financial Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
32 Pages Posted: 14 Oct 2015
Date Written: March 31, 2014
Abstract
Considering their long-lasting and discriminatory effects, the degree to which they threaten minimum core levels of socio-economic rights, and especially given the existence of human rights-centred fiscal alternatives to off set decreased revenue in times of recession, this article examines the degree to which the Spanish government’s austerity measures and structural reforms set out between 2010 and 2012 eff ectively violate the human right to the highest attainable standard of health as protected under international human rights law. Drawing on existing literature, jurisprudence, and new methodologies for monitoring the obligation to fulfil socio-economic rights through economic policy, the chapter will also explore how the case of Spain can inform ongoing debates about the nature of States’ human rights obligations in times of economic crisis, in particular the emerging normative content of the prohibition of retrogression and the related requirement to maximise the availability of resources through fiscal and budgetary policy in line with the obligations set out in international human rights law.
Keywords: human rights, austerity, inequality, economic and social rights, health, migration
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