Law School hosts the FCDO for an event on What can International Disaster Law Learn from Global Health Law?

On Monday 21st of October 2024, the Strathclyde Law School hosted an event on what International Disaster Law can learn from Global Health Law. The event, funded by an award from the ESRC IAA Impact fund, took the form of a multidisciplinary workshop with participants from disciplines including from public health, policy, law, diplomacy, science, maths and statistics.  

The workshop hosted structured critical discussions, drawing lessons for negotiators on what international disaster law can learn from global health responses, in the specific context of responses to humanitarian crises. The event was supported and attended by individuals from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) as well as the British Institute of International and Comparative Law.  

The context of the workshop is the negotiation of two treaties:  the ‘Pandemic Accord’ (WHO) and a potential UN General Assembly treaty focusing on broader issues of disaster responses of international actors including states. Final negotiations for the Pandemic Accord are currently being conducted and debates on the potential International Disasters treaty will take place in October/ November 2024.  

Global health law and international disaster law are two legal areas with very significant commonalities. Both find their raison d’être in preventing and minimising suffering during humanitarian crises and are underpinned by adherence to human rights norms. Furthermore, each focuses not just on ‘response’ to emergencies, but also on prevention, preparedness and the establishment of early warning systems for emergencies (e.g. via public health surveillance activities and identification of zoonotic risks; see Strobeyko and Burci, 2023). However, while there is some existing work exploring the interactions between these two fields (e.g. Iyioha and Tewari, 2024), more work is required to foster common understandings and approaches within these two very siloed areas, as well as exploring their relationship to other disciplines such as science, mathematics, and statistics. The workshop was designed to address this gap, and sought to explore the commonalities and indeed, the lessons each area can learn from the other   

The workshop, led by Thérèse O’Donnell, Stephanie Switzer and Mirosław M. Sadowski, will lead to the production of a policy brief with key takeaways for negotiators (including from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) to the potential International Disasters treaty together with relevant international organisations and civil society stakeholders. The brief will build specialised and contextualised knowledge and the legal capacity of negotiators and other stakeholders.  

             

This picture shows seven participants from the event. Pictured left to right are Anthony Wenton (British Institute of International and Comparative Law), Mirosław M. Sadowski  (Strathclyde Law School), Thérèse O’Donnell (Strathclyde Law School), Stephanie Switzer (Strathclyde Law School), Paul McKell (UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office), Yasmeen Zafar (UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) and Nicola Wardrop (UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)