The Principle of Accessibility as a Core Element of a Human Rights-Based Approach to Undocumented Migrants’ Right to Health

Abstract

Seventy years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, access to health care remains strongly unequal. Undocumented migrants represent a particularly discriminated group in many countries. With the aim of investigating the root causes of such inequality, the article provides a theoretical analysis of the right to health care in the international and regional legal frameworks. On such basis, it examines, from a comparative perspective, the different health care systems adopted in France, Italy and Switzerland and the concrete obstacles to accessibility that ensue from each system. The study adopts a human rights-based approach which focuses on four interrelated dimensions of the principle of accessibility which are pivotal in linking a legal system to its application: non-discrimination, physical accessibility, economic accessibility and information accessibility. This article concludes by arguing that the adoption of a human rights-based approach centred on the principle of accessibility can contribute to a better understanding of the obstacles to undocumented migrants’ effective access to health care and therefore to the full implementation of their rights.