
UN: Commercialising healthcare is a potential cause of racial discrimination
Privatisation and commercialisation of healthcare can lead to racial discrimination: GI-ESCR participated in consultations on the draft General Recommendation 37 of the UN Committee on Racial Discrimination
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) issued its first draft of the General Recommendation N° 37 on racial discrimination in the enjoyment of the right to health. Importantly, the General Recommendation includes commercialisation and privatisation of healthcare among the potential systemic causes of racial discrimination.
Furthermore, CERD’s General Recommendation lists the following steps that private actors in healthcare should take to avoid racial discrimination in their practices:
- Identify and assess actual or potential adverse impacts on the right to health based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin with which they may be involved either through their own activities or as a result of their business relationships,
- Integrate the findings arising from these assessments across relevant internal functions and processes and take appropriate action,
- Track the effectiveness of their response,
- Account for how they address their human rights impacts.
The Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is actively engaging in civil society consultations regarding drafting the General Recommendation, including by submitting an oral statement and written input.
On 3 August 2023, GI-ESCR also submitted an input to the first draft. Our suggestions are based on our recent publication, Healthcare Services and the Commercialisation of Healthcare: A Glossary, which presents an overarching typology to classify public and private healthcare actors, as well as their relative roles in financing, providing or governing healthcare. The policy brief also gives operational definitions of terms such as commercialisation, privatisation, financialisation, and marketisation in healthcare, explaining the links between them.
In our submission, we also propose to expand further the list of normative guidelines related to the right to health and private actors in healthcare to be included in the upcoming General Recommendation. Our proposed wording is based on common normative trends emerging from health-related statements on private actors made by United Nations Treaty Bodies (UNTBs), including CERD, in their Concluding Observations. These common standards are mapped on the basis of GI-ESCR’s routinely updated Compendium on this topic.
GI-ESCR engages with this work as part of our broader effort to promote normative development on human rights and private actors in healthcare.