A Human Rights-based Approach to Health: The Case of a Garment Manufacturing Building Collapse in Bangladesh

Abstract

[Abstract: A Human rights-based approach to health has both philosophical and legal foundations. However, many scholars criticize this approach for its broadness and vagueness. This paper proposes a human rights-based approach to health in regard to the Bangladeshi ready-made garment manufacturing sector. In April 2013, a garment-manufacturing building named Rana Plaza in Dhaka, near the capital of Bangladesh, collapsed causing more than 1,100 garments workers’ death and disabling thousands more. Through the analysis of the Rana Plaza case, this paper argues that health policies for garment workers in Bangladesh’s RMG sector must recognize human rights as the underlying value. In this paper, we adopt Leslie London’s human rights-based approach that analyzes the following three aspects: (1) the indivisibility of civil and political rights, and socio-economic rights; (2) active agency by those vulnerable to human rights viola­tions; and (3) the powerful normative role of human rights in establishing account­ability for protections and freedoms. The human rights approach that is espoused in this paper not only acknowledges the importance of a safe working environment but also explains the nonmaterial aspects of health such as the socio-economic conditions of the workers and their political rights.]