them, in addition to receiving a number of assistance requests arising from the employer not paying
the due wages to some of his employees, or assistance to obtain the passport of the requester of
assistance arising from its seizure by the employer.
33. The National Institution has, in the wake of receiving the abovementioned legal assistance requests,
studied them and expressed a legal opinion on them, and addressed the competent quarters, while
some of the incoming assistance requests were kept in file because the outcome materialized or due
to the Institution not being competent regarding them.
Section IV:
Right to Health
1. The term the right to Health occurred for the first time at the international level in the constitution
of the World Health Organization 1946, whose Preamble stated that health is “Health is a state of
complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”,
and the same Preamble provided that “The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is
one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political
belief, economic or social condition.”.
2. The right to health is represented in receiving acceptable, reasonably priced, suitable quality and
timely healthcare, and hence it is incumbent on states to provide the suitable conditions to enable
individuals to enjoy the highest standard of heal attainable, and this does not mean that a person is
healthy.
3. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948 provides in Article (25) that the right
to an adequate standard of living is considered an important aspect of the right to life, and the right
to health is subject to recognition anew as one of the basic rights enshrined in the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights issued in 1966.
4. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights - which is the committee responsible for
monitoring the compliance of the states that acceded to the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights - issued a general commentary on the right to health, and set out through
it the basic aspects of this right,12 represented in considering it a comprehensive right, where it
considered the right to life beyond what was defined in the preamble of the constitution of the
World Health Organization, for it is a wide spectrum of social and economic factors which produce
circumstances for individuals to live a healthy life, and these basic ingredients of health include;
securing drinking water, availability of secure and sufficient nutrition, suitable housing, work in
healthy and safe conditions, a healthy and clean environment, obtain awareness and educational
information as relates to the right to health, and finally gender equality insofar as enjoying the right
to health.
12 Al-Waqa`eh Paper Number (31), The Right to Health Care, Issued by the High UN Commission for Human Rights, 2008.
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