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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
185855
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| Summary/Abstract |
In November 2021, the World Health Assembly (WHA) is hosting a special session to discuss the proposed plans for a pandemic treaty. Despite the fact that there are scant details concerning the treaty, the proposal has gained considerable support in both the academic community, and at the international level. While we agree that in the wake of the numerous governance failures during COVID-19, we need to develop appropriate global solutions to be able to prevent, detect, respond to, and recover from future global health crises—and that such mechanisms should be rooted in global equity—we disagree, however, that this pandemic treaty, currently, is the most appropriate way in which to achieve this. Indeed, notions of global community, solidarity, fairness are far removed from the reality that we have seen unfolding in the actions of states responding to the pandemic. This is the crux of the tension with the proposed treaty: the balance between the ideal cosmopolitan worldview held by those in power in global health, and the practice of national security decision-making witnessed in the last 18 months. Indeed, we do not believe that a pandemic treaty will deliver what is being extolled by its proponents, and it will not solve the multiple problems of global cooperation in global health that supporters believe it will.
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| 2 |
ID:
187522
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| Summary/Abstract |
Since 2000, health issues have increasingly been discussed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) without consensus being built on how and when the Council address health topics, or on its role in global health governance. As the contributions in this issue show, high-profile infectious disease outbreaks as well as the disruption of healthcare delivery and assistance in conflict settings have driven the health agenda at UNSC debates, but that agenda has remained ad hoc. Health topics seem most likely to be put on the agenda when the P5 perceive a particular health issue as a threat to international peace and security, or when the social and economic consequences of a health crisis potentially destabilise countries or regions. That raises another political question, however: under what circumstances are they likely to perceive health issues in those terms, and whose interests are being prioritised in such a determination?
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| 3 |
ID:
187523
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| Summary/Abstract |
Traditionally falling under the remit of the World Health Organization (WHO), health issues such as health emergencies or access to healthcare have been addressed more frequently in debates and resolutions of the UN Security Council (UNSC) since 2000. As the UNSC is the UN's principal body dealing with threats and endangerments to international peace and security, this points to a certain degree of the securitisation of health. By means of a statistical analysis of UNSC speeches between 1995 and 2019 as well as by examining health-related UNSC resolutions, this research explores by whom and how health is treated as a security issue in UNSC debates. This article argues that health is increasingly paid attention to during health emergencies, displaying a narrow framing of health that follows a health security paradigm. However, health is also addressed with a focus on health systems, the wider determinants of health as well as with respect to the access to healthcare and hospitals and the protection of healthcare personnel. This points to the UNSC considering a broader understanding of public health issues to be relevant for its security agenda.
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