Securitization of International Public Health: Implications for Global Health Governance and the Biological Weapons Prohibition Regime

Abstract

This article analyzes the extent to which international public health has become securitized and what effects this has on global health governance and the biological weapons control regime. Attempts to securitize public health are traced in the two multilateral discursive spaces of greatest rele vance to biological weapons arms control and international public health; the community of state parties to the Biological Weapons Convention, and the World Health Organization. The conclusion is that with respect to pub lic health, the identified securitization moves have led to a strengthening of the state as actor in the provision of international public health. For bio logical weapons arms control, the impact of the identified securitization moves depends largely on the overall development of the biological weapons control regime. Keywords: securitization, international public health, health security, biological security, biological weapons. Public health and biological weapons arms control would appear to be two distinct policy arenas with little, if any, overlap in terms of actors involved, problems to address, and solutions to be proposed to better the human condition. Traditionally, security from biological weapons and security from disease were pursued by different actors on both the domes tic and the international level. For the former, biodefense and biological weapons (BW) arms control policies were formulated by the military and diplomatic communities, while responsibility for disease prevention and mit igation fell to the public health sectors of states, or to international organi zations such as the World Health Organization (WHO). This strict separation has become increasingly blurred. Starting in the mid-1990s, the possibility of terrorism with biological and chemical weapons has evolved into the number one security threat for military planners and decisionmakers in many countries, most notably the United States. This dramatic shift in threat perception, which was fueled first and foremost by the Aum Shinrikyo 1995 sarin gas attack in the Tokyo