Has International Law prepared us for the next pandemic? The International Health Regulations on Trial

About the seminar

Following the outbreak of SARS in 2003, the international community committed to a new era of international law, by revising the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR). The IHR are intended to prevent, and to provide a framework for responding to public health emergencies, including globally-significant, communicable diseases. The IHR are legally binding on all World Health Organization (WHO) Member States, including Australia.

Since the IHR entered into force, the world has faced a number of significant health events, including H1N1 pandemic influenza in 2009, the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and the 2018 Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Each of these events have tested the utility and function of the IHR.

In this seminar, a panel of experts in public health law and global health security will examine whether the International Health Regulations are meeting their goal of protecting public health, international trade, and human rights, and whether the obligations in the IHR are sufficiently robust to respond to ever more complex health emergencies.

This free event hosted by Sydney Law School is a side-event, to the first Global Health Security Conference in Sydney, Australia held from 18 -21 June 2019.

Click here for a copy of the flyer

Panellists

• Dr Mark Eccleston-Turner, Lecturer in Law at Keele University
  The WHO response to Ebola in the DRC: a critical analysis of the legal application of the International Health Regulations

• Dr. Alexandra Phelan, is on faculty at the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University School of Medicine and Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center
  Human Rights under the International Health Regulations in an era of nationalism: laws in Australia and the United States
  

• Dr. Sara Davies, Associate Professor in International Relations at the School of Government and International Relations,Griffith University
  The Politics of Implementing the International Health Regulations
  
  

CPD points = 1.5

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