Over twenty years after it began to take shape, the “health and human rights field” is a misnomer; it is not one field, but many. The application of human rights frameworks to health has been a critical part of the expansion of human rights to social and economic policies and in demonstrating the porousness and arbitrariness of divides between the public and private spheres. The interaction between health and human rights fields has advanced the re-interpretation of legal norms in light of gendered and other experiences and encouraged the establishment of institutional frameworks and procedures at national and international levels. Despite extraordinary successes, however, the utility of human rights faces new challenges: gaining and maintaining normative and social legitimacy, meaningfully disrupting economic inequalities that ravage global health, and navigating the complex move from constitutional and other legal norms to effective enjoyment in practice.

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