Half a century of a right to health?

Anniversaries are useful occasions for taking stock. The fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the two implementing covenants of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), both adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966—is one such occasion. Whereas the Universal Declaration was aspirational, a statement of collective intent to build a better world after the devastation wreaked by “barbarous acts [that] … outraged the conscience of mankind”, the Covenants were intended to serve as tools to promote the implementation of the rights they articulated.