Despite the recent expansion of efforts to delineate the normative and institutional contours of global health law, relatively little has been said of the human agents shaping this young field. This article offers a first descriptive account of global health law as an emerging community of practice, composed of, among others, scholars and teachers, advisers, practitioners and advocates who engage international legal norms in an effort to influence global health. Given the potential sway this community holds over the making, interpretation and application of norms that have bearing on global public health, the article calls for a practice of reflexivity and an ethic of care by self-professed ‘global health lawyers’.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a global crisis with multiple causes, effects and consequences going beyond its immediate health impact. On the one hand, environmental drivers may have facilitated the spillover of the virus to humans, while on the other the pandemic has affected most areas of international relations and revealed a troubling lack of equity and solidarity within and among countries. However, what was the real crisis? Framing COVID-19 as a health crisis brought the negotiation of a new pandemic agreement into WHO as a crisis measure to fill the gaps left by the International Health Regulations and reduce the risk of future pandemics. International law has been defined as a “discipline of crisis”, evolving through responses to violent shocks, and COVID-19 seems to confirm this view. However, international law has also been shaped by a counternarrative highlighting the structural causes of crises and addressing them rather than the symptoms. This historical tension has negatively affected the negotiation of the pandemic agreement, with Global South countries moving beyond a crisis approach and demanding “equity” through structural changes to the pharmaceutical market, support for self-reliance in pharmaceutical manufacturing and guarantees of financing. This fault line also has consequences for global health law in general, in particular because the scarcity of dedicated global health instruments and the limited mandate of WHO questions what issues can be regulated through that organization and which will require the interplay of different institutions and regimes, pointing to regime complexity as the appropriate conceptual tool to undertake that analysis.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has been shaped by global health law throughout its history. Drawing from the post-war establishment of global governance under the United Nations (UN), the modern foundations of global health law were laid by the WHO Constitution, which provided WHO with a range of normative authorities to realize its mandate as the UN’s directing and coordinating authority in global health. Yet WHO has faced political challenges in exercising these normative authorities to advance global health law, revealing the limitations of law as a foundation of global health governance. This article chronicles the 75-year evolution of global health law through WHO governance – beginning in the expansive authorities under the WHO Constitution, examining the political obstacles that long hobbled legal advancements, recognizing the revitalized space for law and policy in the twenty-first century, and analyzing the new limitations exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic response. Global health law reforms will be essential to strengthen global health governance. By analyzing how past challenges to global health law offer lessons for ongoing legal developments, this timely historical analysis offers lessons for WHO reforms to facilitate global solidarity.

With Judgment No 15 of 9 February 2023, the Italian Constitutional Court upheld the legitimacy of the compulsory vaccination against COVID-19 imposed on specific categories of workers and of the consequences of non-compliance. This contribution analyses the reasoning of both the referring judges and the Constitutional Court, to understand whether the latter’s conclusion can be said to be persuasive. In this respect, it is first maintained that the Court was correct in justifying the limitation on the right not to be subject to unwanted health treatments since the right to health also entails the State’s obligation to protect public health. What appears to be questionable is the Court’s finding that the exclusion of suspended workers from the maintenance benefits or any form of social security is constitutionally legitimate. A more careful consideration of international human rights law might perhaps have led the Court to a different conclusion.

Launched by the Global Health Law Consortium and the International Commission of Jurists in 2023, the Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Public Health Emergencies (the ‘Principles’) clarify and affirm international law and correlative standards on human rights and the rule of law in the context of public health emergency prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery. The Principles were developed through a three-year deliberative and consensus-building process between more than 150 individuals from around the world, including international legal scholars and practitioners, human rights defenders, civil society advocates, public health researchers, health workers, and others bearing relevant insights and expertise. Spanning 28 interrelated provisions, they aim to guide the decisions and actions of governments, civil society, and other stakeholders who are at the forefront of efforts to address public health emergencies.

This article assesses Africa’s path to eliminating cervical cancer as a human rights imperative. It discusses states’ obligations in relation to the rights to health, life and non-discrimination in relation to gender and priority setting for cervical cancer prevention and control, as well as the need to address disparities in access to care. The needs of vulnerable and marginalized women are explored through the lens of women living with HIV (WLHIV). It argues that the cervical cancer burden in Africa is highest in countries which correlate with high HIV prevalence, and so the elimination of the disease in this group requires specific strategies tailored to their context. It notes further that cervical cancer cannot be eliminated in Africa without specific attention given to the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination women face, and how this impacts their access to health care. It concludes by providing some concrete suggestions to African governments to address cervical cancer as a human rights imperative.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed failings in preparedness and response across the world and a shortfall in global health security. The crisis also highlighted shortcomings in global and regional legal frameworks, including the International Health Regulations (2005) and relevant European Union law, as well as in national public health legislation and emergency plans. Lessons learned from the pandemic converge around strengthening preparedness and response capacities at all levels, with special attention to be paid to legal preparedness, a critical component of public health emergency preparedness. Improving legal capacities at country level is one of the strategic priorities set by the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), which established a new Legal Preparedness Action Package (LP AP) in order to elevate attention to and the importance of legal preparedness worldwide. Since 2021 the LP AP has been front and centre in international efforts to bridge the legal preparedness gap at national level. In bringing together technical experts in global health law and government health policy officials from a broad range of countries and partners, the LP AP seeks to set a foundation for legal preparedness by developing technical and capacity-building tools, legal guidelines, policy briefs, information and training. This article aims to illustrate and contextualize the work of the GHSA LP AP and raise awareness about the importance of its contribution to enhanced global health security. It also intends to highlight how its work promotes and develops synergies with parallel initiatives, processes and tools, facilitates regime interaction and harmonization of technical assistance and ultimately ensures consistency of action, methodology and approaches.