A/71/304 requirements, including availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality. Many of the Goals’ health-related targets and indicators focus narrowly on biomedical aspects, despite the requirement to ensure that health promotion and primary care are grounded in human rights and modern public health principles. The commitments made in the Declaration of Alma -Ata and the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, 1986, should be reaffirmed and revitalized by all stakeholders, and the ninth Global Conference on Health Promotion 3 should serve that purpose. 9. Other important human rights challenges regarding implementation of the 2030 Agenda include the weak accountability requirements, unclear guidance on how to implement the Sustainable Development Goals holistically and a failure to make commitments or offer guidance on how to transform the global financial system to support such a broad and ambitious global strategy. The role of the private sector also poses various human rights challenges. 10. Nonetheless, while the 2030 Agenda may be flawed, it has the potential to improve the lives of many, in particular the most excluded and marginalized. Human rights and the right to health can reinforce many of the Sustainable Development Goals and, where there are implementation gaps, can offer valuable normative guidance towards their meaningful achievement. III. The right to health and the Sustainable Development Goals A. The right to health as a framework for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals 11. The present section provides only a very brief introduction to the right -tohealth framework and some of the ways in which it can reinforce, strengthen and advance the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. It is important to recall a fundamental difference between human rights and the Sustainable Development Goals. While the Sustainable Development Goals are political commitments, the right to health gives rise to legally binding obligations on States to progressively realize the right to health, as well as duties on the part of other actors, and to do so in the context of their policies and programmes on the Goals. 12. Regrettably, the 2030 Agenda does not explicitly state that health is a human right. As mentioned previously, the Sustainable Development Goals are grounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights treaties. All States have ratified at least one of those treaties. Regional treaties in Africa, Europe and the Americas protect the right to health, as do at least 100 national constitutions worldwide. 4 13. The right to health is also interconnected with other internationally recognized human rights relevant to the Sustainable Development Goals, including the rights to water, food, adequate housing, education, privacy, freedoms of expression and association, freedom from torture, identity and equality before the law, which must also be respected, protected and fulfilled in the context of the Goals. __________________ 3 4 16-13597 See www.who.int/healthpromotion/conferences/9gchp/en. Hans V. Hogerzeil, Melanie Samson and Jaume Vidal Casanova, “Ruling for access: leading court cases in developing countries on access to essential medicines as part of the fulfilment of the right to health” (Geneva, WHO, 2004). 5/26