Compass on a tree stump.

From Cooperation to Solidarity: A Legal Compass for Pandemic Lawmaking

By Guillermo E. Estrada Adán

Leer en español.

This post proposes incorporating solidarity as a legal compass for international norms in a new international pandemic law agreement or reform.

The current model of global health governance espoused by the World Health Organization (WHO), based heavily on cooperation between states, has significant shortcomings. An approach that relies on solidarity, rather than cooperation, would better advance states’ responsibilities to ensure the protection and enjoyment of each individual’s rights. Read More

Euros, U.S. dollars, and pounds.

Who Will Pay for COVID-29? (Or, Who Will Pay to Avert It?)

By Sebastián Guidi and Nahuel Maisley

Leer en español.

Pandemics have very real costs. When they hit, these costs are obvious and dramatic — people fall ill and die, businesses go bankrupt, children are kicked out of school. When they don’t, it’s very likely because we have already taken extremely costly measures to prevent them.

These costs are inevitably distributed — through act or omission — by international law. As the international community discusses a new pandemic treaty, complementary to the International Health Regulations, it bears emphasizing that any global framework that does not reckon with cost will fall short of an acceptable solution.

Read More

Bill of Health - Globe and vaccine, covid vaccine

Decolonizing the Pandemic Treaty Through Vaccine Equity

By Tlaleng Mofokeng, Daniel Wainstock, and Renzo Guinto

In recent years, there have been growing calls to “decolonize” the field of global health. Global health traces its roots back to colonial medicine when old empires sought to address tropical diseases which, if not controlled, could be brought by colonizers back home.

Today, many countries in the Global South may have already been liberated from their colonizers, but the colonial behavior of global health continues to manifest in policies, funding, research, and operations.

Unlike the tropical diseases of the past, SARS-CoV-2 has affected rich and poor countries alike, but the tools for putting this pandemic under control — most notably vaccines — remain unevenly distributed across the world. As of October 27, 2021, 63.5% of individuals in high-income countries have been vaccinated with at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine. Meanwhile, in low-income countries, only 4.8% of the population has been vaccinated with at least one dose.

Read More

People protesting with signs that say "healthcare is a human right" and "medicare for all."

Why We Need a Transformative Right-to-Health Pandemic Treaty Now

By Martín Hevia and Ximena Benavides

Acknowledging what went wrong during the COVID-19 pandemic is crucial to any pandemic lawmaking efforts. Chief among these concerns should be the centrality of human rights to global health security.

Health systems that lack universality and inclusivity will always fall short on disease surveillance, detection, and response during health emergencies, at the risk of not reaching all populations. The risk of exclusion exceeds national borders. Regional and global health governance favor the ‘competition of a few’ over (formal) solidarity, which explains why some of the small number of international collaborative initiatives aiming to reach the poorest countries during the pandemic are falling short.

Nonetheless, human rights remain at the periphery of the global health security conversation and the pandemic treaty debate.

Following the call of dozens of world leaders for a new treaty or another legally binding instrument to strengthen pandemic preparedness and response, the World Health Assembly will convene a special session in November 2021 to consider a new binding agreement that could address key failings in the COVID-19 response, including the insufficient international cooperation to implement the International Health Regulations’ (2005) public health capacities. Such an initiative should also serve as the long-awaited international policy-making window to address our health systems’ deep structural problems.

How can a pandemic treaty positively transform our health systems? In this contribution, we outline four core strategies.

Read More

hospital equipment

The Import of the UNCRPD and Disability Justice for Pandemic Preparedness and Response

By Joel Michael Reynolds and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

During the COVID-19 crisis, many nation-states did not consult or substantively take into consideration treaties protecting the rights of people with disabilities when developing their pandemic responses.

For example, the United Nations’ 2008 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) is an international human rights treaty intended to protect the rights and dignity of all persons with disabilities. It articulates principles of non-discrimination (see especially Articles 2, 3, and 5) and broader obligations upon specific parties, such as states parties, which are obligated to protect the rights and freedoms of people with disabilities (see Article 4, et al.).

The failures to uphold these principles and obligations during the COVID-19 pandemic were met with a swift response. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) produced guidelines on COVID-19 and the rights of persons with disabilities in April of 2020, as well as a policy brief in May of that year.

This commentary outlines three of the more important considerations for international pandemic lawmaking — both for specific instruments and wider deliberation — with respect to people with disabilities in general and the United Nations’ 2008 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) in particular.

Read More

Mexico City 03082021 Feminist march against gender violence, March 8 in Mexico thousands of women protest in the streets for safety and better living conditions, using banners.

Strengthening Global and National Governance for Gender Equality in Health Emergencies

By Anna Coates

An international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response opens a much-needed space to highlight the centrality of gender inequality considerations in health emergency responses.

With an eye to inclusive governance, investment in gender expertise, and strengthening existing normative mechanisms and architecture for gender equality at global and national levels, a new intergovernmental instrument offers an opportunity for future health emergency preparedness and responses to meaningfully contribute to gender equality.

Read More

Researcher works at a lab bench

Scientific Innovation in International Pandemic Lawmaking — Second Symposium Editorial

By Pedro A. Villarreal, on behalf of the editors*

Leer en español.

Lire en français.

Perhaps there is some Utopia where scientific research could immediately provide us all the accurate data on a novel disease´s severity and fatality rate. No doubt some (although not everyone) believe that such an ideal world would include mathematical models that could accurately predict both the disease´s pattern, as well as the effectiveness of the array of medical and non-medical tools to confront it. In this imaginary reality, data could tell us exactly to what extent restrictive public health measures are necessary in a given society to limit the spread of a pathogen, and it would be shared without constraints across the globe. Moreover, in this mythical world, there would be no distance between research and its application, as policymakers would simply need to draw from existing information to “make the right call.” Failsafe mechanisms would be in place to avoid the temptation of either altering scientific data, or using it for partisan motives. And, needless to say, in an ideal world, both research and the products of scientific innovation, including diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines, would be available to everyone, globally, on the basis of need rather than ability to pay.

No such world is possible because science does not work that way. However, the broken world in which we find ourselves underscores the central imperative of reflecting on how lawmaking can be deployed to advance scientific innovation and equity.

Read More

Vial and syringe.

The Pandemic Treaty and Intellectual Property Sharing: Making Vaccine Knowledge a Public Good 

By Ellen ‘t Hoen

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the lack of regulation for the sharing of intellectual property (IP) and technology needed for an effective and equitable response to the crisis.

The Pandemic Treaty (or other legal instrument) scheduled for discussion at the World Health Assembly in the fall of 2021 should focus on establishing the norm that the IP and knowledge needed to develop and produce essential pandemic health technologies become global public goods. It should also ensure predictable and sufficient financing for the development of such public goods.

Read More

Bill of Health - Globe and vaccine, covid vaccine

Promoting Vaccine Equity

By Ana Santos Rutschman

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp relief longstanding equity problems surrounding the allocation of newly developed vaccines against emerging pathogens.

In my upcoming book, Vaccines as Technology: Innovation, Barriers, and the Public Health, I examine these problems and look into possible solutions to incrementally build more equitable frameworks of access to vaccines targeting emerging pathogens. These solutions focus on ensuring that vaccines are made available affordably to the populations that need them the most according to public health parameters.

Read More

Many people together around the world. 3D Rendering.

The Pandemic Treaty as a Framework for Global Solidarity: Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations in Global Health Governance

By Benjamin Mason Meier, Judith Bueno de Mesquita, and Sharifah Sekalala

Rising nationalism has presented obstacles to global solidarity in the COVID-19 pandemic response, undermining the realization of the right to health throughout the world.

These nationalist challenges raise an imperative to understand the evolving role of human rights in global health governance as a foundation to advance extraterritorial human rights obligations under global health law.

This contribution examines these extraterritorial obligations of assistance and cooperation, proposing human rights obligations to support global solidarity through the prospective pandemic treaty.

Read More