This chapter builds on the structural and conceptual challenges outlined in the preceding chapters to describe, compare and analyse the international and European jurisprudence on the right to health care or medical care of undocumented people. The assessment uncovers several inconsistencies. While international human rights law elaborates, inter alia, on the concepts of ‘primary health care’ and non-discrimination of vulnerable people, including irregular migrants, in its scope of application, European human rights law entitles irregular migrants to a level of health protection that equates to ‘urgent’ or ‘life-saving’ treatments. Although international human rights bodies employ vulnerability and core and positive obligations to urge states to implement measures in this area of law and policy, the chapter recommends a more substantive-oriented approach to health care obligations by international bodies aligned to the accessible level of health care specified in the WHO recommendations on ‘primary health care’ and greater rigour and consistency in health-related terminology and legal arguments to increase persuasiveness. In both this and the following Chapter 4, special remarks are dedicated to irregular migrant children and to women’s access to reproductive services and care.

With its November 2002 adoption, General Comment (GC) No. 15 on the Right to Water of the ICESCR provided an authoritative base upon which states could better implement their obligations, and individuals and communities could more effectively advocate for the fulfillment of their right to water – and, in doing so, closed a significant gap in human rights law. This chapter forms the book’s empirical entry point into the TLC in practice by showing one such coalition as this story’s protagonist. More specifically, the chapter draws on novel data sources from interviews, background talks, and archival research to reconstruct GC No. 15’s drafting process – telling the story of how water became a human right – to ultimately unearth the TLC and the various aspects of its lawmaking agency in a specific case. Shown with an insular drafting core that both coalesces around a single CESCR member and comprises a select few non-UN technical and legal experts who become involved with great autonomy, the TLC detailed here contours the theoretical expectations advanced in the preceding chapter.