The Protection of the right to health under the Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The present study discusses the protection of the right to health under the Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It argues that the DRC Constitution protects the right to health in a meaningful way. Indeed, not only does the Constitution protect the right to health in its broadest sense including health care and other underlying determinants of health, it also protects all the rights herein contained with the same status. In other words, all human rights protected by it are justiciable. Furthermore, the Constitution binds both the State and individuals to the Bill of Rights. According to the Constitution, ratified international instruments such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the African Charter on Human and People Rights are part of the domestic legal system of the DRC that the courts and tribunals must apply. This implies that in applying international treaties, the courts and tribunals may hold the DRC government responsible for violating one or more aspects of the right to health, which are not specifically provided for in the Constitution. However, the fact that the State is bound to unqualified obligations to provide immediate implementation of the right to health without taking account of the country's developmental level may be illusory. Moreover, the primary enabling law the Constitution refers to in order to give effect to the right to health has never been enacted. Also, there is no jurisprudence on the right to health including from the Supreme Court of Justice, which is the highest court of the land. This may be due to the lack of cases before the courts in which Congolese people sought to claim their right to health. Thus, without appropriate implementation measures, the right to health as protected under the DRC Constitution will remain illusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]