@article{2026:galicz:rediscov,
title = {(Re)discovering the European Social Charter to Protect the Health of People on the Move in Times of Backsliding},
year = {2026},
note = {This article engages in a critical analysis of the European Social
Charter’s scheme to safeguard the health of people on the move,
including refugees, asylum-seekers and irregular migrants. It aims to
assess how the European Committee of Social Rights has mobilised
health-related rights to enhance the Charter’s protective potential
against restrictive migration and asylum policies. By doing so, this
article seeks to contribute to the debate on the relevance of social
rights in the context of “human rights backsliding”. Accordingly,
Section A outlines the state of the art and unpacks the research
parameters. Section B reconstructs the Charter’s general scheme,
personal scope and monitoring mechanisms, as well as its structure of
health protection. Against this backdrop, Section C investigates the
Committee’s interpretative techniques to safeguard the target
group’s health in collective complaints. The qualitative case-law
analysis demonstrates that the Charter protects the well-being of
people on the move in a “doubly composite” way: from an internal
perspective, health falls under multiple rights and their
operationalisation requires an assessment of overlapping material
scopes; from an external perspective, the Committee enhances the
Charter’s potential by embedding it in its wider legal environment
and fostering its linkages with the European Convention on Human
Rights and other human rights treaties. Section D concludes with some
critical reflections on the Charter’s role in Europe’s human
rights architecture.},
journal = {VRÜ Verfassung und Recht in Übersee},
pages = {11--35},
author = {Galicz, Kamilla},
volume = {59},
number = {1}
}