Statelessness Working Paper Series 2016/04 to a nationality” as well as discouraging the arbitrary removal of that right.12 Furthermore, Article 24(2) of the 1976 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)13 outlines obligations to prevent the denial of citizenship by insisting on birth registration, whilst Article 7(1) of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)14 declares that every child has a right to acquire a name and nationality.15 However, there remains a large disjuncture between the rights that International Human Rights Law (IHRL) affords to non-citizens and the realities that stateless individuals must face. The main problem with protecting stateless persons is not that the international legal safeguards are not in place, but that they are often ignored by domestic constitutions.16 The result of this is that individuals are often left vulnerable to the systematic degradation of their basic human rights.17 2. The “right to health: Its origins & relationship to Statelessness 2.1 The meaning of the “right to health” & its legal protections The unification of ‘health’ with the idea of ‘rights’ finds its preliminary locus in the 1946 World Health Organisation (WHO) Constitution which advocated that the “enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being.” 18 This sentiment was echoed within Article 25 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which contended that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family,” including medical care.19 However, the WHO Constitution does not form part of the corpus of IHRL, therefore, the core formulation of the right to health is outlined within Article 12 of the 1976 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)20 where it asserts the right to the “highest attainable standard of physical and mental health” 21 and then outlines provisions for the progressive realisation of this goal. In order to operationalize this provision, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights issued General Comment 14 on the Right to Health in 2000. General Comment 14’s interpretation of Article 12 of the ICESCR can be applied to stateless populations in several ways. Firstly, it demonstrates the need for equitably distributing the underlying determinants of health in a non-discriminatory manner to realise equal enjoyment of the right to health. Secondly, it opposes discriminatory practices relating to women’s health status and needs. Thirdly, it promotes the provision of nondiscriminatory health care accessibility; and finally, it proscribes acts of commission—for instance the revoking of citizenship by law—and omission, such as excluding a child from birth registration, which may cause statelessness.22 2.2 The right to health: A tool for health equity and justice 12 United Nations, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) United Nations, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976) 14 United Nations, Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) 15 BK Blitz, ‘Statelessness, protection and equality’ (2009) 3 Forced Migration Policy Briefing, Refugee Studies Centre 16 R Howard-Hassman, ‘Introduction: The Human Right to Citizenship’, in R Howard-Hassman & M Walton-Roberts (eds) The Human Right to Citizenship: A Slippery concept (UP Press, 2015), 1-18 17 Z Albarazi & L Van Waas, ‘Towards the abolition of gender discrimination in nationality laws’ (2014)46 FMR; Georgetown Law Human Rights Institute, Left Behind: How Statelessness in the Dominican Republic Limits Children’s Access to Education (2014) Human Rights Institute Fact-Finding Project 18 World Health Organisation (WHO), World Health Organisation Constitution (1946) 19 United Nations, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) 20 United Nations, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1976) 21 A Yamin, Imagining a different world: reflection on what applying a human rights framework to health means and why we should care (2010) Beloit College. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd-WREXfr9A 22 L Kingston, E Cohen, & C Morley, Debate: Limitations on universality: the “right to health” and the necessity of legal nationality (2010) BioMed Central International Health and Human Rights 2 13