Advancing Health Justice in a Turbulent World: A Free and Open Symposium Commemorating 75 Years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the World Health Organization

As the world transitions from living in the grips of a novel coronavirus to living with an entrenched, widespread infectious disease known as COVID-19, our appreciation for the human rights implications of public health crises are once again rapidly fading from view. Against the backdrop of this recurring amnesia, two processes to reform global health law are underway: revisions to the IHR and negotiations towards a “WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response,” commonly called the “pandemic accord” or “WHO CA+”. With negotiations to revise the IHR and develop a pandemic accord culminating against the backdrop of the twin 75th anniversaries of the Constitution of the World Health Organization and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, these challenges can and should be channelled as unprecedented opportunities for productively advancing the linkages between global health and human rights law. This full-day Symposium, organized by the University of Ottawa’s Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics, the Human Rights Research and Education Centre, together with the Global Health Law Consortium, the American Society for International Law’s Global Health Law Interest Group, and the Geneva- and Canada-based branches of the International Commission of Jurists, will convene legal advisors, health policymakers and researchers in a systematic stock-taking of lessons learned and lessons missed, particularly as they relate to human rights considerations in prevention, preparedness and response.