Assignment Task:
Using the materials below, react to the following three statements:
The innate weakness of international law stems in large part from the core principle of state sovereignty. The law that is made and the law that is implemented depend upon the will of states.
Developed countries have chosen to focus on COVID-19 first and foremost as a health security crisis and used that narrative to shape and narrow the development of new interntional health rules. This has been challenged by the determination of Glboal South countries to use the crisis mostly as an entry point to achieve deepr structural hanges in the distribution of economic power in the pharmaceutical and technological field.
Globalization has contributed to the rapid decline in the practical capacity of sovereign states to address public health challenges through unilateral national action alone and expanded the need for health governance structures that transcend traditional and increasingly inadequate national approaches.
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the World Health Organization. Factsheet No. 31 - The Right to Health, pp. 1-39.
Taylor, Allyn, Global Health Law: International Law and Public Health Policy, International Encyclopedia of Public Health, 2nd edition 2017, Volume 3, pp 268-280.
Roojin Habibi, Someone Call a Public Health Lawyer: global health law as an emerging community of practice, Journal of Global Health Law, Vol 1, No. 1, May 2024, pp. 71-87.