Community interests and the right to health in trade and investment law

The authors examine the interaction between international trade and investment law on the one hand and the right to health as a human right on the other. They argue that international economic law has the potential to make a profound impact on the realization of the right to health. Yet the relationship between international economic law, on the one hand, and international human rights law and the right to health, on the other, is rarely acknowledged explicitly in the primary sources of trade and investment law. The chapter considers the U.N. treatment of this relationship as well as the right to health and human rights in WTO agreements, preferential trade agreements, bilateral investment treaties, and international disputes. Using tobacco control as a case study, the chapter concludes that international economic law has the capacity to balance health interests, such that the objectives of health, trade, and investment can be aligned.