There is a clear overlap between securing socio-economic human rights for all persons and arranging adequate access to essential public services across society. Both are necessary to realise thriving, inclusive societies, with adequate living standards for all, based on human dignity. This edited volume brings together the two topics for the first time. In particular, it identifies the common challenges for essential public services provision and socio-economic human rights realisation, and it explores how socio-economic rights law can be harnessed to reinforce better access to services. An important aim of this book is to understand how international socio-economic human rights law and guideposts can be used and strengthened to improve access to services, and assess socio-economic legal and policy decisions.
The volume includes contributions from different continents, on a range of different services, and engages with the realities of different regulatory settings. After an introduction that sets out the most important challenges for universal access to services – including sufficient resources mobilisation, private actor involvement and regulation, or the need for improved checks and balances – the book goes on to discuss current issues in services provision and socio-economic rights, as well as explores the place and role of private business actors in the provision of services. In particular, it assesses how the responsibility and accountability of such actors for human rights can be improved . The final part of the book narrows in on the under-explored human rights concepts of ‘participation’ and ‘accountability’, as essential prerequisites for better ‘checks and balances’. Overall, this volume presents a unique and powerful illustration of how socio-economic human rights law supports improved access to essential public services for all.
Table of Contents:
1. Common Challenges for Socio-Economic Human Rights and Essential Public Services Provision Marlies Hesselman, Antenor Hallo de Wolf and Brigit Toebes Part I: Socio-Economic Human Rights for Essential Public Services Provision: Trends and Issues 2. Reconciling International Obligations and Local Realities: Provision of Pain Control Medication in Resource Constrained Countries—Experiences from Uganda Marie Elske C Gispen 3. The Right to Health and TRIPS: Access to Essential Medicines and Patenting in India Jennifer Sellin 4. Access to Water Services: the World Bank and Water Rights Mónika Ambrus 5. Is Cutting People's Electricity Off 'Cut Off' from the Ratione Materiae Jurisdiction of the CJEU and the ECtHR? Panos Merkouris 6. Disaster Management in EU Law: Solidarity Among Individuals and Among States Mauro Gatti Part II: The Role of Private Actors in Essential Public Services Provision 7. EU Public Service Obligations and their Potential for Human Rights Protection Hetty ten Oever and Iris Houben 8. Private Providers of Essential Public Services and de jure Responsibility for Human Rights Lottie Lane 9. Pharmaceutical Companies and Intellectual Property Protection: Human Rights Actors or Recipients? Shamiso Philomina Zinzombe 10. The Responsibility of Business Enterprises to Restore Access to Essential Public Service at Resettlement Sites Lidewij van der Ploeg, Frank Vanclay and Ivo Lourenço Part III: Participation and Accountability for Essential Public Services Provision 11. ‘Participation’ for All? Challenges and Tools to Realize Participation for Vulnerable Persons with a Focus on Health Services Titti Mattsson 12. Mobilizing Public Participation as a Requirement of the Right to Health in the Context of China’s Air Pollution Huanlin Lang 13. Individual inputs and collective outputs: understanding the structural benefits of individual litigation on healthcare in Brazil Danielle da Costa Leite Borges 14. Access to Effective Remedies for the Protection of Human Rights in Essential Public Services Provision in Colombia Jimena Murillo Chávarro 15. The Media’s Role in Ensuring Accountability for the Right to Health in China Yi Zhang Conclusion 16. International Guideposts for Socio-Economic Human Rights in Essential Public Services Provision Marlies Hesselman, Antenor Hallo de Wolf, Brigit Toebes
About the Author :
Marlies Hesselman is lecturer in Public International Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and concluding Ph.D. research on universal access to modern energy services.
Antenor Hallo de Wolf is Assistant Professor of International Law and Human Rights Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands and a former visiting fellow of the Human Rights Implementation Centre at the University of Bristol, UK.
Brigit Toebes is an Associate Professor and Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
