Right to Health Litigation and HIV/AIDS Policy

Domestic litigation has become a principal strategy for realizing international treaty obligations for the human right to health, providing causes of action for the public’s health and empowering individuals to raise human rights claims for HIV prevention, treatment, and care. In the past 15 years, advocates have laid the groundwork on which a rapidly expanding enforcement paradigm has arisen at the intersection of human rights litigation and HIV/AIDS policy. As this enforcement develops across multiple countries, human rights are translated from principle to practice in the global response to HIV/AIDS, transforming aspirational declarations into justiciable obligations and implementing human rights through national policies and programs.