Summary

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals provide an opportunity to improve the health and human rights of those furthest behind. Human rights and the right-to-health framework can contribute to their effective implementation and achievement.

The present report highlights the mutually reinforcing complementarities between the Goals and the right to health. It looks at four issues to illustrate how the right to health can help to address critical implementation gaps within the Sustainable Development Goals framework, namely:

1. equality and non-discrimination,
2. accountability,
3. universal health coverage, and
4. violence.

The report argues that where the health-related Goals show weakness and lack of clarity with regard to implementation, the right to health is a powerful tool to ensure effective and equitable achievement of the Goals. The 2030 Agenda provides momentum to pave the way, both in developing and developed countries, for sustainable investments in modern public health policies and break the vicious cycle of poverty, inequities, social exclusion, discrimination and violence. The Special Rapporteur makes a number of recommendations to States and few to international human rights mechanisms.