Solidarity in the wake of COVID-19: reimagining the International Health Regulations

Reclaiming comprehensive public health

“…As a global pandemic, COVID-19 thus also requires cooperation, communication and solidarity across countries and international organisations as envisaged in the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR), the Sustainable Development Goals and the 1978 and 2018 Declarations on Primary Health Care. 4 How will we judge the public health response to COVID-19? Was it rights driven, participatory, equitable, compassionate and based on solidarity?…”

“…16 Ignoring reminders from the WHO that the pandemic risk remains until all are protected, a sense of threat and self-protection has led to the inequitable stockpiling of essential health technologies and vaccine nationalism in high-income countries, undermining the international risk prevention and solidarity intended in the 2005 IHR. 4 17 Emergency laws enabling a biosecurity approach have altered checks and balances on executives of government, enabling millions of dollars raised internationally or mobilised from public revenue to be applied without adequate parliamentary or public scrutiny, even while large sections of the population struggle to survive and face mental health crises with the loss of income under lockdowns. 9…”

The Failure of ‘Core Capacities’ Under the Who International Health Regulations

“…First, given the technical nature of the core capacities, it would be appropriate to provide them with more content than is currently the case, and moving away from their current approach of 'constructive ambiguity': Annex 1 currently reflects '[t]he widespread lack of clarity with respect to key State obligations in the current IHR' 87 which ultimately undermines compliance. Based on Article 55 IHR, and as was the case as regards Annex 7 in in 2014, 88 Annex 1 could be formally amended by the World Health Assembly to better define the measures required, particularly through recourse to benchmarks and qualitative/quantitative standards.…”

Existential Risks to Humanity Should Concern International Policymakers and More Could Be Done in Considering Them at the International Governance Level

“…Mitigation of the risks from synthetic biology will likely require the promotion of safe and responsible scientific community norms, closer links between scientists and biosecurity experts, increased awareness of dual‐use technology and improvements to the world's ability to respond to a major pandemic or an engineered multipandemic in a synchronized and coordinated way (Cameron et al., 2019; Nelson et al., 2019). The UN could leverage the World Health Organization and upgrade the International Health Regulations to facilitate this (Taylor et al., 2020).…”