The Stellenbosch Consensus on the International Legal Obligation to Collaborate and Assist in Addressing Pandemics (original) (raw)
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International Organizations Law Review, 2020
The International Health Regulations (IHR), of which the World Health Organization is custodian, govern how countries collectively promote global health security, including prevention, detection, and response to potential global health emergencies such as the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. While Article 44 of this binding legal instrument requires countries to collaborate and assist each other in meeting their respective obligations, recent events demonstrate that the precise nature and scope of these legal obligations are ill-understood. A shared understanding of the level and type of collaboration legally required by the IHR is a necessary step in ensuring these obligations can be acted upon and fully realized, and in fostering global solidarity and resilience in the face of future pandemics. In this consensus statement, public international law scholars specializing in global health consider the legal meaning of Article 44 using the interpretive framework of the Vienna Convention on ...
International Organizations Law Review, 2020
The International Health Regulations (IHR), of which the World Health Organization is custodian, govern how countries collectively promote global health security, including prevention, detection, and response to global health emergencies such as the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Countries are permitted to exercise their sovereignty in taking additional health measures to respond to such emergencies if these measures adhere to Article 43 of this legally binding instrument. Overbroad measures taken during recent public health emergencies of international concern, however, reveal that the provision remains inadequately understood. A shared understanding of the measures legally permitted by Article 43 is a necessary step in ensuring the fulfillment of obligations, and fostering global solidarity and resilience in the face of future pandemics. In this consensus statement, public international law scholars specializing in global health consider the legal meaning of Article 43 using the inter...
COVID-19 Pandemic, the World Health Organization, and Global Health Policy
Social Science Research Network, 2021
The emergence and quick spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the focus and dynamics of the debates about global health, international law, and policy. This shift has overshadowed many of the other controversies in the international sphere. It has also highlighted the tensions that often exist in international affairs—especially in understanding the place and purpose of international institutions, vis-à-vis states, in the general schema of public international law. Central to the international response to the current pandemic is the World Health Organization (WHO)—a treaty-based organization charged with the overarching mandate of ensuring “the highest possible level of health” for all people. Interestingly, the WHO has also become entangled in a foreign policy spat between China and the United States of America. This work explores the public international law aspects of the WHO and why we should focus on its primary policy mandate and avoid unduly heaving the institution into perennial strategic policy games of states. It argues against turning such an illustrious institution, charged with a peculiar mandate, into an arena of zero-sum competitions amongst states. The hope is that this paper will provide crucial insights and assist legal and policy experts in understanding the organization, insulating it from unnecessary strategic games of powerful states, and ensuring the continued and effective delivery of global health policy2 through the WHO.
The Stellenbosch Consensus on Legal National Responses to Public Health Risks
International Organizations Law Review
The International Health Regulations (ihr), of which the World Health Organization is custodian, govern how countries collectively promote global health security, including prevention, detection, and response to global health emergencies such as the ongoing covid-19 pandemic. Countries are permitted to exercise their sovereignty in taking additional health measures to respond to such emergencies if these measures adhere to Article 43 of this legally binding instrument. Overbroad measures taken during recent public health emergencies of international concern, however, reveal that the provision remains inadequately understood. A shared understanding of the measures legally permitted by Article 43 is a necessary step in ensuring the fulfillment of obligations, and fostering global solidarity and resilience in the face of future pandemics. In this consensus statement, public international law scholars specializing in global health consider the legal meaning of Article 43 using the inter...
International Law in a Time of Pandemic
Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies, 2020
International Law in a Time of Pandemic To say that this issue of the Journal has been produced under unusual circumstances would be an understatement. When we began work on the issue in March 2020, the seriousness of the 'coronavirus disease 2019' ('covid-19') outbreak was starting to become clear. Already in January, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (who) had declared the covid-19 outbreak a 'public health emergency of international concern' (pheic),1 that is to say, as an 'extraordinary event' deemed under the International Health Regulations 'to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease' and 'to potentially require a coordinated international response' .2 In March, the Director-General further declared the outbreak a 'pandemic' .3 The so-called Finagle's law of dynamic negatives (a somewhat lesser-known derivative of Murphy's law) postulates that 'anything that can go wrong, willat the worst possible moment'. This seems to have held true with respect to the covid-19 outbreak from a global perspective. The pandemic hit during an era of increased scepticism in science, a decline of democracy and a rise of authoritarianism, a flare-up of big-power rivalry, and waning multilateralism. As a consequence, the response to covid-19 became a political plaything both journal of international humanitarian legal studies 11 (2020) 187-191
From security to solidarity: The normative foundation of a global pandemic treaty
Journal of Global Health, 2022
In response to the ongoing discussion about creating a new pandemic treaty, we first identify that the security discourse has dominated global health governance. Yet, we argue that the solidarity discourse is necessary for promoting global health and compliance with relevant legal instruments in the post-COVID era. At the critical moment where transformation of the global pandemic response regime is about to happen, we consider that the sense of feeling prepared prior to a disease outbreak and the sense of urgency when it happens require an ethical reason – that is, global solidarity. Without it, the institutional redesign might not work. The belief in and realisation of global solidarity, shared between global citizens and the nation-states they constituted domestically, include both dimensions of self-interest and global public good. The former comes from the expectation for the boomerang effect of sharing, and the latter accumulates all the primary and side benefits from the process of sharing burden and effort. Thus, the discourse of global solidarity is not only ethically necessary, in order to ensure commitment to carry costs to assist others of equal membership, but also practically necessary, in order to promote the incentives of seeking international support and cooperation.
The View of International Law on The Pandemic Covid-19
Proceedings from the 1st International Conference on Law and Human Rights, ICLHR 2021, 14-15 April 2021, Jakarta, Indonesia, 2021
The views of world countries on the handling of the Covid-19 Pandemic give the impression of solving the global health crisis. Whereas international law is a special mechanism in handling pandemics through the operationalization of International Health Regulations which are coordinated globally by the WHO international organization. The aim is to examine the implications of force on international law. The main approach to legal research method is to apply a total lockdown or physical distancing in accordance with the health protocol established by WHO. By elaborating, international law contains obligations, authorities, procedures, and roles and challenges faced in handling a global pandemic. Finding the fact that, IHR 2005 works on international law, but a 'one size fits all' instrument that can solve all the problems of handling the positive sum global health crisis to interdependence, institutionalism, multilateralism, and a zero-sum game democratic system where the state is strengthening.
International Law Post Pandemic (2020)
In: Gonzalo Levi Obregón Salinas (Org.). Lo Multidisciplinario del Antes y Después del Covid-19. Ciudad de México: Thomson Reuters, 2020. (ISBN 978607-474-571-9), 2020
This paper reflects on International Law in the face of the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) viral pandemic. First, the article examines the role of International Law against the pandemic, focusing mainly on the regulatory framework available to the World Health Organization (WHO). Then, based on the examination of the stance of some States before the pandemic and the action of the WHO, the text points out evidence that the current geopolitical conjuncture still holds national sovereignty as a maxim. Further, the document explains how maintaining the primacy of sovereignty is not an adequate strategy to deal with contemporary times' global challenges. Finally, the article highlights the relevance of assuming a systemic perspective in the practice of contemporary International Law, which, despite its flaws, should still be used as an instrument for peace and international cooperation.
Göttingen Journal of International Law, 2016
The institutional decisions regarding the 2009–2010 influenza A(H1N1) pandemic displayed how the World Health Organization's (WHO) role as the international organization in charge of coordinating the pandemic response amounts to an exercise of authority. Notably, the 11 June, 2009 Pandemic Declaration was grounded in the WHO's guidelines that do not have a binding nature according to international law. However, this is not an obstacle for considering them as an act of authority, since their effects can constrain the decision-making of States. If these non-binding acts have an authoritative nature, then it is necessary to address various legitimacy issues that may be present. This is where the concept of international public authority (IPA) can prove useful, since it enables to combine the non-binding nature of Pandemic Declarations and the respective guidelines with broad legally-oriented figures such as transparency and accountability. The controversies surrounding the 2009...
Developing an Innovative Pandemic Treaty to Advance Global Health Security
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 2021
Recognizing marked limitations of global health law in the COVID-19 pandemic, a rising number of states are supporting the development of a new pandemic treaty. This prospective treaty has the potential to clarify state obligations for pandemic preparedness and response and strengthen World Health Organization authorities to promote global health security. Examining the essential scope and content of a pandemic treaty, this column analyzes the policymaking processes and substantive authorities necessary to meet this historic moment.