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Title | Date added | Template | Original document | Paragraph text | Body | Document type | Thematics | Topic(s) | Person(s) affected | Year |
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The right to an adequate diet: the agriculture-food-health nexus 2012, para. 8 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Like undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency or "hidden hunger" is a violation of a child's right to a standard of living adequate for the child's physical and mental development, and to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health, recognized under article 6, paragraph 2, and article 24, paragraph 2 (c), of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The environment, not genetics, explains differences in child development between regions. The WHO Child Growth Standards demonstrate that infants and children from geographically diverse regions of the world experience very similar growth patterns when their health and nutrition needs are met, so that all children have in principle the same development potential. States, therefore, have a duty to support exclusive breastfeeding for six months and continued breastfeeding, combined with adequate complementary foods, until the second birthday of the child; and to establish food systems that can ensure each individual's access not only to sufficient caloric intake, but also to sufficiently diverse diets, providing the full range of micronutrients required. | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2012 | ||
The right to an adequate diet: the agriculture-food-health nexus 2012, para. 16 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | First, it is troubling that the 1981 International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and subsequent World Health Assembly (WHA) resolutions remain under-enforced, despite the wide recognition that exclusive breastfeeding for the six first months and continued breastfeeding, combined with safe and adequate complementary foods, up to 2 years old or beyond is the optimal way of feeding infants, and reduces the risk of obesity and NCDs later in life. Countries committed to scaling up nutrition should begin by regulating the marketing of commercial infant formula and other breast-milk substitutes, in accordance with WHA resolution 63.23, and by implementing the full set of WHO recommendations on the marketing of breast-milk substitutes and of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children, in accordance with WHA resolution 63.14. | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2012 | ||
The right to an adequate diet: the agriculture-food-health nexus 2012, para. 17 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Second, the focus on pregnant and lactating women and infants in some recent nutrition initiatives, while understandable, should not lessen the need to address the nutritional needs of others, including children, women who are not pregnant or lactating, adolescents and older persons. The right to adequate food, which includes adequate nutrition, is a universal right guaranteed to all. This pleads in favour of broad-based national strategies for the realization of the right to food that address the full range of factors causing malnutrition, rather than narrowly focused initiatives that address the specific needs of a child's development between conception and the second birthday. | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2012 | ||
Vision of the mandate 2014, para. 36 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | The first five years of life are the most important period of human development, with the first 1,000 days requiring special attention. Ensuring that a child receives adequate nutrition during that window of 1,000 days can have a profound impact on his or her ability to grow. It can also shape the long-term health, stability and prosperity of a society. Stunting, caused by chronic undernutrition early in a child's life, affects some 165 million children around the world. It was estimated that in 2011 more than one in every four children under five years of age in the developing world was stunted. Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are the two regions where stunting continues to be highly prevalent, with low-income countries experiencing the highest levels. Undernutrition magnifies the effects of every disease, including measles and malaria, while malnutrition can also be caused by certain illnesses which reduce the ability of the body to convert food into usable nutrients. | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2014 | ||
Vision of the mandate 2014, para. 38 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Although issues of undernutrition are often framed in terms of disability prevention, good nutrition is also vital for those who already live with a disability. Infants and children with disabilities suffer the same ill-effects of undernutrition as those without: poorer health outcomes; missing or delayed developmental milestones; avoidable secondary impairments; and, in extreme circumstances, premature death. The exclusion of children and adults with disabilities from nutritional outreach efforts on the basis of the incorrect belief that preserving the life of a child or adult with a disability is of lower priority than preserving the life of someone who is not disabled must be addressed by tackling such discriminatory social and cultural norms which advocate this. | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2014 | ||
Vision of the mandate 2014, para. 39 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Maintaining breast-feeding programmes, especially in countries experiencing the HIV epidemic poses a major challenge. The Special Rapporteur intends to coordinate with the United Nations Children's Fund the World Health Organization and other relevant stakeholders to help develop policies for strengthening specific programmes for young children. She also encourages States to fully implement the Global Strategy on Infant and Young Child Feeding, to position breastfeeding as the norm and to respect and promote community-based food sovereignty approaches to complementary feeding. The International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes, adopted by the World Health Assembly at its thirty-fourth session in 1981 as a minimum requirement to protect and promote appropriate infant and young child feeding, should also be supplemented by further monitoring and regulation to ensure that companies responsible for the production of baby food follow similar quality control regulations for domestic use to those for export products. | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2014 | ||
Vision of the mandate 2014, para. 41 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | A right-to-food approach requires that States fulfil their obligation to ensure that safe, nutritionally adequate and culturally acceptable food is available; they must also respect and protect consumers and promote good nutrition for all. The Voluntary Guidelines, in particular Guidelines 9, on food safety and consumer protection, and 10, on nutrition, can guide States in the establishment and maintenance of effective food and nutrition policies, thereby increasing the protection of the most vulnerable from unsafe food and inadequate diets, while helping to combat overweight and obesity. The Convention on the Rights of the Child indicates that access to adequate nutrition, including family support for optimal feeding practices, is a right that should be supported for every child. The Special Rapporteur believes that increased focus must be placed on mother and child nutrition as the core of a healthy start in life, with the correlation between infant and young child feeding and food security being treated as a priority in all global food and nutrition security programmes and with formal recognition at the international and national level, including in legal frameworks. | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2014 | ||
Gender perspectives on torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment
or punishment 2016, para. 28 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | The Special Rapporteur on Prisons and Conditions of Detention in Africa of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights noted in a 2001 report on prisons in Malawi that prisons were not safe place for pregnant women, babies and young children and that it was not advisable to separate babies and young children from their mothers. Even very short periods in detention settings can undermine a child's psychological and physical well-being, compromise cognitive development and result in higher rates of suicide, self-harm, mental disorders and developmental problems (A/HRC/28/68). Children living in prison with their mothers may be at heightened risk of suffering violence, abuse and conditions of confinement that amount to torture or ill-treatment. In this context, the imprisonment of pregnant women and women with young children must be reduced to a minimum. | Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2016 | ||
Integrating a gender perspective in the right to food 2016, para. 63 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Women remain more vulnerable than men in post-disaster situations, as their household responsibilities increase while access to resources decreases. The daily work involved in providing food, water, and fuel for households after a disaster requires intensive labour, the bulk of which is borne by women. Moreover, marketing interference with breastfeeding initiation and long-term prolongation jeopardizes women's ability to safely feed their infants and young children due to unreliable quality and quantity of safe drinking water, particularly in post-disaster situations. | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2016 | ||
Effects of pesticides on the right to food 2017, para. 82 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | One of the most catastrophic incidents involving pesticides occurred in 1984 in Bhopal, India, where approximately 45 tons of methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a Union Carbide plant as a result of negligence, immediately killing thousands of people and resulting in serious health issues and premature deaths for tens of thousands living in the vicinity. Epidemiological studies conducted soon after the accident showed significant increases in pregnancy loss, infant mortality, decreased fetal weight, chromosomal abnormalities, impaired associate learning and respiratory illnesses. | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2017 | ||
Right to health and criminalization of same-sex conduct and sexual orientation, sex-work and HIV transmission 2010, para. 66 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Some countries have enacted laws that criminalize mother-to-child transmission explicitly (see paragraph 54 above) or implicitly due to overly broad drafting of the law. Where the right to access to appropriate health services (such as comprehensive prevention of mother-to-child transmission services and safe breastfeeding alternatives) is not ensured, women are simply unable to take necessary precautions to prevent transmission, which could place them at risk of criminal liability. In 2008, only 45 per cent of pregnant women living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa and only 25 per cent in South and East Asia had access to prevention of mother-to-child transmission services. | Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2010 | ||
Criminalisation of sexual and reproductive health 2011, para. 38 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | In certain jurisdictions, pregnant women have been prosecuted for various types of conduct during pregnancy. A number of prosecutions have occurred in relation to the use of illicit drugs by pregnant woman, including under pre-existing laws relating to child abuse, attempted murder, manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Criminal laws have also been used to prosecute women for other conduct, including alcohol use during pregnancy, the birth of stillborn babies or the miscarriage of a foetus (see A/HRC/17/26/Add.2, para. 68), failing to follow a doctor's orders, failing to refrain from sexual intercourse, and concealment of the birth. | Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2011 | ||
Right to health in early childhood - Right to survival and development 2015, para. 41 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | In contrast, the Convention separates the right to health (art. 24) and the right to survival and development (art. 6). However, there is no doubt that these articles are fundamentally linked. For example, article 24 includes a range of obligations that are inseparable from ensuring survival and development, such as diminishing infant and child mortality, providing medical assistance, combating disease and malnutrition, ensuring appropriate pre- and postnatal health care for mothers, providing access to information on child health, developing preventive health care and guidance for parents and abolishing harmful traditional practices. The right to survival and development can only be implemented in a holistic manner through the enforcement of other rights contained in the Convention, such as the right to health. | Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2015 | ||
Right to health in early childhood - Right to survival and development 2015, para. 56 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Experts recommend major changes in routine baby medical checks to detect and address social and emotional difficulties, which could be early signs of toxic stress, as a means of reducing many of society's most complex and costly medical issues, from heart disease to alcohol and drug abuse. In addition, some of the evidence-based health interventions that are included in the "zero draft" of the new global strategy for women's, children's and adolescents' health, such as nutrition counselling and "kangaroo" mother care for small babies, can be very useful in assisting main actors adopting a modern approach to health interventions. | Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2015 | ||
Report of the SR on the right to health and Agenda 2030 2016, para. 16 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | The right to health includes a right to health care. Health care is closely connected to all the targets in Goal 3 and directly reflected in the targets to achieve universal health coverage (target 3.8) and ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services (target 3.7). The relationship between universal health coverage and the right to health is explored further below, while the right to sexual and reproductive health care has been elaborated in general comments Nos. 14 and 22 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as well as in a number of previous reports by the mandate holder (see E/CN.4/2004/49, A/66/254, A/HRC/14/20 and A/HRC/32/32). The right to health can also support and be supported by such targets as the reduction of maternal and newborn and under-5 mortality rates (targets 3.1 and 3.2) and of the incidence of communicable and non-communicable diseases (targets 3.3 and 3.4), the promotion of mental health (target 3.4) and the reduction of the number of deaths from road traffic accidents (target 3.6). | Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2016 | ||
Study on illegal adoptions 2017, para. 39 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | The above-mentioned motivations for carrying out illegal adoptions often overlapped, as was notably the case in Spain throughout the Franco regime and during the first decades of democracy. Indeed, the practice of illegally adopting children for ideological and religious reasons soon morphed into a profit-driven criminal activity. Thousands of newborn babies were reportedly abducted from their parents by criminal networks involved in large-scale illegal adoptions. Medical personnel and clergy members actively participated in the abduction of children. Newborn babies were abducted from hospitals and subsequently told that their parents had died. The children were then given to other parents following the falsification of documents and, in certain cases, payments. | Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children, including child prostitution, child pornography and other child sexual abuse material | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2017 | ||
Gender-related killings of women 2012, para. 80 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | In the case of India, international attention has been drawn to the vast divergence in the country's natural gender ratio, with estimates that in 2003 100 million women were "missing" from its population. It is estimated that one million selective female foetal abortions occur annually in India. There is no official statistical data available on female infanticide, but in the state of Kerala, it is estimated that about 25,000 female newborns are killed every year. The preadolescent mortality rate of girls under 5 years old was 21 per cent higher than for boys of the same age in India. Violence, as well as nutritional and deliberate medical neglect by girls' parents, was cited as the main causes of death. | Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2012 | ||
Right to health in early childhood - Right to survival and development 2015, para. 53 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | The different elements that form article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in particular paragraph 24 (d), (e) and (f), including pre- and postnatal care for mothers; access to education and information on child health and nutrition, advantages of breastfeeding, hygiene and sanitation and prevention of accidents; and the development of preventive health care demonstrate that during the process of adopting the Convention there was a broader understanding of how to promote and protect the health of children. | Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2015 | ||
Work of the mandate and priorities of the SR 2015, para. 66 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | However, current rates of preventable deaths among newborns, children under 5 and adults are still unacceptably high. Universal health-care coverage is still a dream for many. The realization of the right to health is impeded by many factors, and most of them are related to inequalities, and selective approaches to human rights principles and existing scientific evidence. This can and must be addressed with the strong commitment by States and concerted efforts by all stakeholders. | Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2015 | ||
Right to food and nutrition 2016, para. 3 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Recognizing the growing threat of malnutrition in all its forms and its negative impacts on economic development, universal health and efforts to reduce inequality, the international community has taken major initiatives to ensure global policy action. The World Health Organization (WHO) global targets to improve maternal, infant and young child nutrition by 2025, the Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases 2013-2020 and the political commitments made at the Second International Conference on Nutrition, in 2014, to ensure the right of everyone to safe, sufficient and nutritious food are encouraging responses. It is now also recognized that nutrition plays a crucial role in fulfilling the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2016 | ||
Right to food and nutrition 2016, para. 17 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | WHO recommends breastfeeding within one hour of birth and exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life. Nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods should be introduced at 6 months of age, together with continued breastfeeding up to 2 years of age or beyond. Yet only about 36 per cent of infants between 0 and 6 months old are exclusively breastfed. In high-income countries, fewer than one in five infants are breastfed for 12 months, and only two out of three children between 6 months and 2 years of age receive breast milk in low- and middle-income countries. These rates have not improved in two decades. In addition, few children receive nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods. A total of 823,000 children's lives could be saved yearly if all children between 0 and 23 months were optimally breastfed. One of the major obstacles to breastfeeding is the misleading marketing by baby food companies of breast milk substitutes and the lack of corporate accountability for the adverse consequences of such abuses. | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2016 | ||
Right to food and nutrition 2016, para. 64 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Children and pregnant and lactating women enjoy even further protections. The Convention on the Rights of the Child confirms that, to ensure the full implementation of a child's right to enjoy the highest attainable standard of health, States must take appropriate measures to combat disease and malnutrition through, inter alia, the provision of "adequate nutritious foods" (art. 24 (2) (c)) and that in case of need they must provide material assistance and support programmes, including with regard to nutrition (art. 27 (3)). The Convention also calls for the protection and promotion of exclusive breastfeeding for infants up to 6 months of age, and for breastfeeding to continue alongside appropriate complementary foods preferably until 2 years of age. | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2016 | ||
Integrating a gender perspective in the right to food 2016, para. 68 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Impacts of decreased water quality as a result of climate change are also gender differentiated. Children and pregnant women are more physically vulnerable to waterborne diseases and their role in supplying household water and performing domestic chores makes them more vulnerable to developing diseases, such as diarrhea and cholera, which thrive in degraded water. Decreased water resources may also cause women's health to suffer as a result of the increased work burden and reduced nutritional status. For instance, in Peru following the 1997-98 El Niño events, malnutrition among women was a major cause of peripartum illness. | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2016 | ||
Right to health in early childhood - Right to survival and development 2015, para. 51 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | International human rights law places particular and explicit emphasis on the obligation of States to guarantee a number of relevant health and health-related services. For example, it places an obligation on States to provide appropriate pre and postnatal health care for mothers as well as appropriate services at birth and to newborns. The Convention on the Rights of the Child has clarified the interventions that should be made available across this continuum which are, for the most part, important for optimal child development as well as survival. Children affected by congenital anomalies or malnutrition, chronic illnesses or severe and life-limiting diseases should be referred to specialized paediatric palliative care services, which can be provided in tertiary care facilities, in community health centres and in children's homes. | Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2015 | ||
Report of the SR on the right to health and Agenda 2030 2016, para. 64 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Review at the national and subnational levels should take place within existing national structures and processes, including national human rights institutions, policy review processes, comprehensive maternal death audits, patient's rights tribunals, and litigation. For example, national human rights institutions provide accountability for the right-to-health-related Sustainable Development Goals, including by undertaking national assessments and enquiries and by participating in other domestic and international review processes, offering advice to Governments on promoting and protecting rights in national implementation plans and on rights-based implementation, including through support for the development and use of human rights impact assessments. | Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2016 | ||
Enjoyment of the rights to health and adequate housing by migrants 2010, para. 33 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | The Convention on the Rights of the Child extensively provides for the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health (art. 24). In that same article, obligations are placed on States to make every effort "to ensure that no child is deprived of his or her right of access to such health care services" by, inter alia, providing children with "necessary medical assistance and health care" and ensuring "appropriate prenatal and post-natal healthcare for mothers". | Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2010 | ||
Servile marriage 2012, para. 100 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | The minimum age cannot be applied if there is no proper birth and marriage registration in the country. Registration of births should be compulsory even if the marriages of the parents are not registered. | Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2012 | ||
Gender equality in the realization of the human rights to water and sanitation 2016, para. 36 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Water, sanitation and hygiene needs are critical to prevent high maternal and newborn mortality rates. In its recently adopted general comment No. 22 (2016) on the right to sexual and reproductive health, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights notes that access to safe and potable water and adequate sanitation, as well as access to health-related education and information, are the underlying determinants to that right. Collaboration among sectors makes it possible to exchange information on how to deliver education on culturally taboo topics and to give greater priority to female-specific needs, in a manner that the water, sanitation and hygiene sector alone cannot achieve. | Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2016 | ||
Eliminating discrimination against women in the area of health and safety, with a focus on the instrumentalization of women's bodies 2016, para. 106h | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | [The Working Group recommends that States:] Prevent instrumentalization of women in the birthing process and ensure that penalties are incurred for gynaecological or obstetrical violence, including performing abusive caesarean sections, refusing to give women pain relief during birth or surgical termination of pregnancy and performing unnecessary episiotomies; | Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and practice | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2016 | ||
Right to health in early childhood - Right to survival and development 2015, para. 101 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Certain "core obligations" are not subject to progressive realization and must be implemented immediately. Core obligations include: (a) elaboration of a comprehensive national plan for the right to health, including development, in early childhood; (b) non-discriminatory access to health and other relevant services; (c) equitable distribution of health and other facilities for the right to health in early childhood; and (d) access to a minimum "basket" of health-related services and facilities (A/HRC/7/11, para. 52). | Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health | Special Procedures' report |
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| 2015 |