On January 8, GSL Research Fellow Roojin Habibi together with a number of colleagues from the Global Health Law Consortium co-authored a column in the Journal of Law Medicine, and Ethics discussing the World Health Organization’s role in developing and implementing global health law.
In the piece, the authors argue that COVID-19 has shown that existing legally-binding global health law such as the International Health Regulations (IHR) have proven incommensurate to the COVID-19 challenge. Now the WHO now finds itself at a crossroads in their reforms: accept the divisive nationalist responses which have characterized the response to COVID-19 or recommit to international cooperation through global health governance.
Meier et al. think that reform global health law to prepare for future global health challenges is crucial. This is politically challenging as global solidarity requires member states to relinquish sovereignty over certain aspects of health policy and will mean greatly enhanced funding of the WHO in health emergency responses.
Read the full piece here.
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