Migration and the Right to Health: A Review of International Law International Migration Law No. 19.

The present study concerns the heterogeneous group of individuals involved in the migration process. They include: migrants, be they in a regular or an irregular situation including the victims of smuggling, or intending a long or short term stay; victims of trafficking in persons; asylum seekers;refugees; displaced persons11 and others in need of international protection and assistance. Collectively, all these categories of individuals are referred to, in this publication, as migrating persons.

The objective of this publication is primarily to promote respect by the State for the right to health for those who migrate. Secondly, the publication aims more generally at guiding health and legal practitioners, students, academics, and those migrating themselves through the myriad of norms and principles contained in international instruments impacting on migrating persons’ right to health. It includes both binding and non-binding instruments, or excerpts thereof. A short definition of the instruments’ legal force and effect precedes the excerpts. There is a brief introduction on migrating persons’ right to health and its international protection guaranteed by the various norms applying to those who migrate.

The instruments are divided into two sections: general and specific. The first section includes relevant human rights instruments whose guarantees are not reserved for nationals or a specific group of people, but apply to all individuals, nationals and non-nationals alike. The second section examines the right to health of specific categories of individuals involved in the migration process.

Finally, considering the importance of the application de iure and de facto of the human rights norms which, as aforesaid, are at the core of migrating persons’ protection, examples of compliance or non-compliance by States with relevant articles of human rights instruments have been added in Part II. Such examples have been extracted from the UN Treaty Bodies’ concluding observations relating to various country reports.

All documents are in the official English version together with citations of their original source. The reader is, however, encouraged to consult the original text for any details or updates on the status of each instrument.

Finally, any act of selection is by definition subjective and considering the multitude of legal norms relating to the international movement of people, it is impossible to be comprehensive. The desire of the author, however, is to acquaint the reader with the various international instruments relating to right to health of those who migrate with the aim of encouraging him or her to carry the research forward.