title: A Progressively Realizable Right to Health and Global Governance.
abstract: A moral right to health or health care is a special instance of a right to fair equality of opportunity. Nation-states generally have the capabilities to specify the entitlements of such a right and to raise the resources needed to satisfy those entitlements. Can these functions be replicated globally, as a global right to health or health care requires? The suggestion that "better global governance" is needed if such a global right is to be claimed requires that these two central capabilities be present. It is unlikely that nation-states would concede these two functions to a form of global governance, for doing so would seriously compromise the authority that is generally included in sovereignty. This claim is a specification of what is often recognized as the "sovereignty problem." The argument of this paper is not an "impossibility" claim, but a best guess about whether the necessary conditions for better global governance that supports a global right to health or health care can be achieved.
authors.affiliation: Department of Global Health and Population, Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, Rm 1210 D, Bldg 1, 665 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, USA. ndaniels@hsph.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Norman
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Daniels
mesh_terms: D014943:Global Health / Q000941:ethics*; D006297:Health Services Accessibility / Q000941:ethics*; D006806:Human Rights; D006801:Humans; D012935:Social Justice / Q000941:ethics*; D012941:Social Responsibility
keywords: Entitlements to health or health care; Global governance; Progressive realization; Right to health; Sovereignty problem