The Child’s Right to Health & the Courts
Aoife Nolan
School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast
In addition to being set out in a wide range of international and regional human rights
instruments, the child’s right to health has been included in a large number of national
constitutions. This paper will consider the way in which the child’s right to health has
been interpreted and applied by a wide range of domestic courts and international judicial
and quasi-judicial decision-making bodies, including the European Committee of Social
Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the South African Constitutional
Court, the Colombian Constitutional Court and the Argentine Constitutional Court The
paper will discuss the remedies that have been formulated by different bodies in cases
involving the child’s right to health that have appeared before them. In doing so, the
paper will identify the role that has been, and may be, played by the courts in fleshing out
the substantive content of, and ensuring the enforcement of, the child’s right to health.
Finally, the paper will discuss the challenges posed to the effective adjudication and
enforcement of the child’s right to health by the lack of an Optional Protocol to either
the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights or the Convention
on the Rights of the Child.