Limitations on Universality : The 'Right to Health' and the Necessity of Legal Nationality

The right to health, including access to basic healthcare, has been recognized as a universal human right through a number of international agreements. Attempts to protect this ideal, however, have relied on states as the guarantor of rights and have subsequently ignored stateless individuals, or those lacking legal nationality in any nation-state. While a legal nationality alone is not sufficient to guarantee that a right to health care is accessible, an absence of any legal nationality is almost certainly a obstacle in most cases. There are millions of so-called stateless individuals around the globe - usually members of racial or ethnic minority groups - who are, in effect, denied medical citizenship in their countries of residence. A central motivating factor for this essay is the fact statelessness as a concept is largely absent from the medical and human rights literature. The goal for this discussion, therefore, is primarily to illustrate the need for further monitoring of health access issues by the medical and human rights communities, and for a great deal more research into the effects of statelessness upon access to healthcare. This is important both as a theoretical issue, in light of the recognition by many of healthcare as a universal right, as well as an empirical fact that requires further exploration and amelioration