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Room 3D, First Floor

BUILDING D
Faculty of Law, Administration and Economics

Uniwersytecka 7–10
50–145 Wrocław

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Healing the World: Global Public Health Challenges and Perspectives

Name: Healing the World: Global Public Health Challenges and Perspectives
Start: 2022-07-05T14:00:00+02:00
End: 2022-07-05T15:45:00+02:00
Location: Faculty of Law, Administration and Economics

Although Global pandemics have been a recurrent concern, the COVID 19 pandemic brought to the fore the profound limitations of the current regulatory regime, both at the international and domestic levels, while the unilateral initiatives by governments and international organisations raise concerns of normative coherence. At the international level, the World Health Organization (WHO) has focused on assessing its own preparedness and the adequacy of its handling of the COVID 19 pandemic, with a view to developing effective frameworks for facing similar health threats in the future. What legal role has the WHO played in the seemingly fragmented national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic? What role should the WHO play in future pandemics on issues like information-sharing and equity in the global distribution of medicines, considering its limited powers?

At the national level many states undertook emergency measures to reduce and prevent the risks of harm to their populations. Some of these measures are difficult to reconcile with human rights norms under existing international instruments, and with rules and principles of democratic government, rights and liberties under the constitutional regimes of most States. Are there overarching values that ought to inform restrictions on freedom of movement and expression even in the face of medical emergencies?

Many pandemic emergency measures, even when well intentioned, have been criticised for being over-broad, and left in place for too long, raising concern for the long-term effect on democratic governance. How can we prevent global health emergencies from fuelling democratic backsliding?

Phoebe OkowaModerator, Professor of Public International Law at Queen Mary, University of London and an advocate of the High Court of Kenya

Phoebe Okowa is Professor of Public International Law at Queen Mary, University of London and an advocate of the High Court of Kenya. Educated at the University of Nairobi and the University of Oxford, she previously taught at the University of Bristol and has held visiting appointments at the Catholic University of Lille and the University of Stockholm. In 2011 and 2015, she was Global Visiting Professor at New York University, School of Law. A member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, she has appeared as Counsel before the International Court of Justice and lectured on practical questions of international law for the United Nations at its Regional Course on International Law for Africa. She is on the Public International Law Advisory Panel of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and the Committee of Legal Experts of the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law. She has written on a wide range of contemporary international law topics including the interface between state responsibility and individual accountability for international crimes, Africa and the International Criminal Court, unilateral and collective responses to protection of natural resources in conflict zones and aspects of the protection of the environment.
In November 2021, Professor Okowa was elected to the UN International Law Commission for the term 2023-2027.

Siri Gloppen University of Bergen

Is Professor of Political Science and Vice Dean (Research) of the Social Sciences Faculty at the University of Bergen, and founding Director of LawTransform (CMI-UiB Centre on Law & Social Transformation). Her research agenda lies at the intersection of law and politics, with broad experience from cross-regional, interdisciplinary research investigating legal mobilization and the role of law and courts, including in health, abortion and LGBTIQ+ politics, democratic backlash, climate change, land rights and child protection.

Judit Sandor Central European University

Is a professor at the Faculty of Political Science, Legal and Gender Studies of the Central European University. In 2004-2005 she was the Chief of the Bioethics Section at UNESCO. She chairs the Center for Ethics and Law in Biomedicine. She has been involved in numerous research projects. In 2019 her team received an ERC Synergy Grant. She has published numerous books and scientific papers in the fields of human rights and bioethics.

Pedro A. VillarrealMax Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law

Is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. Where he is co-manager of the interdisciplinary project “International Health Governance.” He received his PhD from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where his dissertation, “Pandemics and Law: A Global Governance Perspective” (published in Spanish in 2019) received the prize for the best doctoral thesis in law and social sciences.

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