The right to life and the right to adequate housing: the indivisibility and interdependence between these rights 2016, para. 35
Paragraph- Paragraph text
- In A.H.G v. Canada, the Committee considered the effect of deporting A.H.G, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, to Jamaica, where he would be exposed to "a great risk of deterioration of his health condition, social exclusion, isolation and homelessness" (CCPR/C/113/D/2091/2011, para. 3.2). A.H.G alleged that deportation would violate the right to life (art. 6) and the right to freedom from cruel and inhuman treatment (art. 7). The Committee received evidence of inadequate housing and support services in Jamaica for persons with psychosocial disabilities and, tragically, after being deported, the author did in fact become homeless, living in an "open dump" (ibid., para. 5.8). Yet the Committee found the claim of a violation of the right to life "insufficiently substantiated" and therefore inadmissible. The Committee apparently applied, in the context of an individual communication, the narrow approach to the right to life that it had warned against in its general comment No. 6 by requiring evidence of a direct and intentional threat to the claimant's life. With respect to the right to be free from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, on the other hand, the Committee found a violation, affirming that the aim of article 7 is to protect both the dignity and the physical and mental integrity of the individual - an aim that equally could have been attributed to the right to life.
- Legal status
- Non-negotiated soft law
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Means of adoption
- N.A.
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- Persons with disabilities
- Year
- 2016
- Paragraph type
- Other
- Reference
- SR Housing, Report to the UNGA (2016), A/71/310, para. 35.
- Paragraph number
- 35
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