Title: Access to Medical Treatment for People Living with HIV/AIDS: Success Without Victory in Chile
Abstract: Access to health and courts of law have been frequent bedfellows. Experiences from around the world, of which those from South Africa and India are best known, illustrate how courts of law have been instrumental in enforcing the legal protection of social rights. Civil society organizations resort to the judiciary to secure the satisfaction of their rights while often times the executive and legislative branches simply neglect to act, in spite of a country’s international human rights obligations. This paper explores how social rights may be enforced even when courts rule against rights-based claims. Through litigation, civil society groups may push the political process to respond to claims of marginalized groups, and to respond and discuss how to satisfy the demands that cannot always be claimed in court. By looking at the case of public interest litigation in Chile, we discuss how public interest litigation have advanced some of the social justice goals that advocates promote even though courts have failed to respond to such claims.