COVID-19 Pandemic, The World Health Organization, and Global Health Policy

The emergence and quick spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the focus and dynamics of the debates about global health, international law, and policy. This shift has overshadowed many of the other controversies in the international sphere. It has also highlighted the tensions that often exist in international affairs—especially in understanding the place and purpose of international institutions, vis-à-vis states, in the general schema of public international law. Central to the international response to the current pandemic is the World Health Organization (WHO)—a treaty-based organization charged with the overarching mandate of ensuring “the highest possible level of health” for all peoples. Interestingly, the WHO has also become entangled in a foreign policy spat between China and the United States of America. This work explores the public international law aspects of the WHO and why we should focus on its primary policy mandate and avoid unduly heaving the institution into perennial strategic policy games of states. It argues against turning such an illustrious institution, charged with a peculiar mandate, into an arena of zero-sum competitions amongst states. The hope is that this paper will provide crucial insights and assist legal and policy experts in understanding the organization, insulating it from unnecessary strategic games of powerful states, and ensuring the continued and effective delivery of global health policy through the WHO

MISERABLE COMFORTS OR CONCRETE PROTECTIONS: HUMAN RIGHTS CONVENTIONS, TREATIES, DECLARATIONS, AND THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS/OTHERED COMMUNITIES—QUO VADIS?

It has become an annual ritual for the world—especially through the United Nations (UN)—to organize events and activities celebrating Indigenous Peoples.1 Further to this disposition, the UN has adopted a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.2 Equally, it is now fashionable, to include the needs, and questions, affecting indigenous peoples in our development programs and climate action activities—albeit sometimes as an addendum to the mainstream policies.3 The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the current prominence of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and decolonialization language in international policy briefs, give further credence to this apparent commitment to the rights of indigenous and othered communities. The recently concluded UN Climate Action Conference in Scotland (C0P26) 4 also voiced out some of the concerns of indigenous communities.5 Beyond these Conventions, Treaties, Declarations, and good faith statements, about the rights of indigenous/othered communities, it is imperative to articulate a set of principles, that can ensure that these apparent commitments do not become miserable comforts to indigenous and othered communities. Such principles can be implemented as best practices, and therefore sharpen the blunt edges of liberal international human rights. More so, such will enhance the pedagogies regarding the rights of indigenous peoples using Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) because indigenous people are often the racialized other, and also part of the “third world.” Thus, this essay highlights the possibilities that CRT and TWAIL can bring to the paradigms and proposes a ten-principle approach through which we can (re)invigorate these conventions, treaties, and declarations; thereby enhancing the human rights of indigenous/othered communities

'LEGAL TRANSPLANTS' AND 'FUNCTIONALISM' IN TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE: THE WEST AFRICAN EXPERIENCE OF TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSIONS

Supplemental file(s) description: Dissertation approvalLEGAL TRANSPLANTS AND FUNCTIONALISM IN TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE: THE WEST AFRICAN EXPERIENCE OF TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSIONS ID# 3815416 COSMAS CHIBUEZE EMEZIEM CORNELL UNIVERSITY 2018 ABSTRACT It is almost axiomatic that transitional societies are usually faced with existential needs — redress of injustices, peace, and rebirth of social bearing. This has birthed transitional justice—a set of judicial and non-judicial measures aimed at redressing human rights abuses —which may include prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations, and such other transitional justice measures. Transitional justice is also about the desire to unearth the truths underpinning the injustices and creating a new paradigm of societal living—justice informed by truth. To fulfill these needs, legal ideas, and templates are readily borrowed —making transitional societies fertile grounds for legal transplants. Query ― how well suited are these legal borrowings for the recipient society? What levels of critical scrutiny are given to basic social, economic and structural questions of the recipient normative order so as to ensure an effectual transplant? Post-Colonial Africa —West Africa — is a vast field of transitions. Legal Transplant of the transitional justice mechanism of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) has become quite common in the region. I argue that to understand the impact of the l transplant of TRCs, there is a need to understand the functions of TRCs— manifestly and otherwise. One way of doing this is to further interrogate TRCs with the comparative law theory of functionalism. This interrogation I argue, will yield not only ‘the manifest and latent functions’ of TRCs but also strengthen its transformative capacity. More so, the analytical and comparative evaluation of the TRCs seen in parts of West Africa Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone via legal transplant and functionalism, will help in sharpening TRCs are effective tools of transitional justice in ways that are not only economically transformative, but also social justice driven and capable of sustaining peace through human flourishing. It must be emphasized that the work seeks to infuse the TRC mechanism with a recipe of socioeconomic and political economic consciousness so that ‘the felt necessities’ of the communities meaningful leaving, healing, food, education, shelter, access to clean water and capabilities; which often predisposes them to fragility do not become the forgone alternative in transitional justice. Otherwise the TRC mechanism becomes merely grand gesture lacking in real impact on the wellbeing of transitional societies. In addition, the grand gestures about TRCs will continue to suffer the critique of producing modest results. In the end transitional societies want peace a peace founded on truth, and justice – and I dare say that that economic justice is indispensable in that search. Economic justice is a legitimate expectation of transitional societies and this work inserts itself directly into the center of the ongoing scholarly debate about the impact of TRCs as mechanisms of transitional justice in the West African region. It does this using legal transplants and functionalism theories. It makes a case that economic and social justice should not be treated as forgone alternatives of transitional justice process but as cornerstones of the entire transitional justice architecture2023-09-1

MISERABLE COMFORTS OR CONCRETE PROTECTIONS: HUMAN RIGHTS CONVENTIONS, TREATIES, DECLARATIONS, AND THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS/OTHERED COMMUNITIES—QUO VADIS?

It has become an annual ritual for the world—especially through the United Nations (UN)—to organize events and activities celebrating Indigenous Peoples.1 Further to this disposition, the UN has adopted a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.2 Equally, it is now fashionable, to include the needs, and questions, affecting indigenous peoples in our development programs and climate action activities—albeit sometimes as an addendum to the mainstream policies.3 The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the current prominence of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and decolonialization language in international policy briefs, give further credence to this apparent commitment to the rights of indigenous and othered communities. The recently concluded UN Climate Action Conference in Scotland (C0P26) 4 also voiced out some of the concerns of indigenous communities.5 Beyond these Conventions, Treaties, Declarations, and good faith statements, about the rights of indigenous/othered communities, it is imperative to articulate a set of principles, that can ensure that these apparent commitments do not become miserable comforts to indigenous and othered communities. Such principles can be implemented as best practices, and therefore sharpen the blunt edges of liberal international human rights. More so, such will enhance the pedagogies regarding the rights of indigenous peoples using Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) because indigenous people are often the racialized other, and also part of the “third world.” Thus, this essay highlights the possibilities that CRT and TWAIL can bring to the paradigms and proposes a ten-principle approach through which we can (re)invigorate these conventions, treaties, and declarations; thereby enhancing the human rights of indigenous/othered communities