Tag: world health assembly

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

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

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.

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21st Century Lawmaking in an Interdependent World

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By Caroline E. Foster

A new pandemic instrument should explicitly embrace the three emerging global regulatory standards of due diligence, due regard, and regulatory coherence.

These standards sit at the interface between national and international law to help functionally align the two in ways that will protect and advance shared and competing interests in an interdependent world.

The standards require nations to exercise their regulatory power in certain ways, including demonstrating (i) due regard for the international legal rights and interests of others, (ii) due diligence in the prevention of harm to other States, and (iii) regulatory coherence between governmental measures and their objectives. These international law standards are already implicit in and given effect by the operation of WHO’s current International Health Regulations (IHR) of 2005.

As we develop new pandemic instruments, their presence should be made increasingly explicit. Giving a stronger profile to the standards will help generate new political impetus and new legal bases for implementation of world health law, and fit it to 21st century application.

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Strengthening International Legal Authorities to Advance Global Health Security

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By Lawrence O. Gostin

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed marked limitations in the International Health Regulations (IHR) and constrained authorities of the World Health Organization (WHO). With a rising imperative to advance pandemic preparedness and response, more than twenty heads of government proposed a new pandemic treaty. This prospective pandemic treaty offers a pathway to develop innovative international legal obligations, strengthening core capacities, good governance, and compliance mechanisms to prepare for novel outbreaks with pandemic potential.

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Moving Beyond a State-Centric Pandemic Preparedness Paradigm: A Call for Action

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By Tsung-Ling Lee

Despite the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recent efforts to broaden participation, the international infectious disease control regime remains state-centric.

As such, the state-centric infectious disease regime violates the fundamental principle of how contagious diseases spread within and across countries — the virus recognizes no national borders, nor does the virus discriminate. The longstanding global health mantra — no country is safe until all countries are safe; no one is safe until everyone is safe — should guide global pandemic preparedness.

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