The WTO Agreement and the Right to Health: Conflict or Consensus? A Developing Country Perspective

The WTO Agreement and the Right to Health: Conflict or Consensus? A Developing Country Perspective

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Volume 1 Issue 2 ()

I seek to delve deep into a problem area of the modern International Trade Jurisprudence – an issue of immense implications for the Developing World in particular, and all the nations of world in general. The issue it to ascertain how and in what ways has the globalization process and the on-going Free Trade Regime affected Public Health – recognized as a basic Human Right. The necessary question to be addressed would be whether the International Trade regime needs to, and if yes, how much, care about the Human Right slaw, or, for that matter, any other principle of Public International Law principle? In answering this question, Health will be taken as a pointer which would indicate the WTO’s intent of addressing this Right through the various covered Agreements, and seek to address in the process the oft-emerging question of the co-relationship between the two apparently conflicting ideals of Human Rights protection and Free Trade.

Cite as: Shameek Sen, The WTO Agreement and the Right to Health: Conflict or Consensus? A Developing Country Perspective, 1 NUJS L. Rev. 225 (2008)