CANCELLED Friday Lecture: 'In the shadow of trade: a critique of Global Health Law' - Prof Sharifah Sekalala, University of Warwick

Apologies, due to ill health this event is now cancelled.

This lecture is a hybrid event. There is a sandwich lunch at 12.30 pm in the Old Library at the Centre. All lecture attendees welcome.

Register online 

Lecture summary: In this talk Sharifah Sekalala examines this critical moment in the making of Global Health Law, with two treaty making processes: the revisions of the International Health Regulations and ongoing negotiations by the Intergovernmental Negotiation Body for a possible pandemic Accord or Instrument, as we well as soft-law proposals for the World Health Organization proposal for a medical countermeasures platform.

The lecture will illustrate that despite the laudable objectives of creating a new system of international law that attempts to redress previous inequalities in accessing vaccines and countermeasures, these are increasingly unlikely to be realised, due to a lack of consensus amongst member states. The lecture will argue that this is because, despite being a public good, Global Health Law has always been underpinned by capitalist and (post-)colonial rationales which privilege trade. In order to make lasting changes, the current system of Global Health Law must focus on broader questions of reparations that will achieve greater equity.

Sharifah Sekalala is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work is at the intersection of international law, public policy, and global health. She is  primarily interested in global health crises and the impact of law in curbing inequalities. Sharifah is PI on a project on digital health and regulation in Sub Saharan Africa as well as leading the work package on law and reparations on an interdisciplinary project: After the end; Lived experiences and aftermaths of diseases disasters and drugs in global health.

This co-authored blog features some of the ideas that foreground this lecture. Manufacturing Inequality: Examining the Racial-Capitalist Logics behind Global Pandemic Vaccine Production
 

Chair: Dr Fernando Lusa Bordin

The Friday Lunchtime Lecture series is kindly supported by Cambridge University Press & Assessment.