Global Health Governance through the UN Security Council: Health Security vs. Human Rights?

Abstract

Since the end of WW II, human rights have been a foundation for global health governance through the UN. These rights have provided a normative framework and political catalyst for WHO responses to common health problems, with health long seen to be outside of the remit of the UNSC. However, as WHO faced new threats that highlighted its institutional limitations, infectious disease governance shifted towards the Security Council. Over the past 20 years, the UNSC began to securitise health, framing infectious disease as a threat to national security. The trend towards securitisation has continued in the current COVID-19 pandemic, and it remains unclear whether human rights or ‘health security’ will frame the global response. In this contribution we describe the rise of health security and its impact on human rights in global health governance for infectious disease control, tracing the ways in which human rights have appeared in both WHO and UNSC responses to health crises. We then critique the Security Council’s engagement with human rights, arguing that there is opportunity to expand this engagement in ways that further rights. We conclude by recognising that the COVID-19 crisis has illustrated the centrality of underlying determinants of health, such that future Security Council resolutions must engage with a broader range of human rights and focus on working with WHO in order to coordinate an effective rights-based response to this global threat.