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Shaping Global Health Law through United Nations Governance: The UN High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2024

Benjamin Mason Meier Open the ORCID record for Benjamin Mason Meier [Opens in a new window] ,
Alexandra Finch  and
Nina Schwalbe
Benjamin Mason Meier
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL, NC, USA
Alexandra Finch
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL, NC, USA
Nina Schwalbe
Affiliation:
SPARK STREET ADVISORS, NEW YORK, NY, USA.
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Abstract

The United Nations (UN) General Assembly High-Level Meeting (HLM) on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (PPPR) was a missed opportunity to bring high-level commitment and momentum to the global governance of health emergencies. Intended to bring much-needed attention to a policy issue that is rapidly slipping down the international agenda, the fraught diplomacy among member states, lack of consensus on key issues, and weak UN Political Declaration in New York foreshadow a difficult road ahead for upcoming negotiations under the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva. This column chronicles the evolving engagement of the UN in global health governance, examines the diplomatic process leading to the UN HLM on PPPR, and assesses the contributions and missed opportunities of its resulting Political Declaration.

Keywords

United Nations (UN)United Nations General AssemblyWorld Health Organization (WHO)Global Health LawCovid-19Global Health Law
Type
Columns: Global Health Law
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 51 , Issue 4: Medical-Legal Partnerships: Equity, Evaluation, and Evolution , Winter 2023 , pp. 972 - 978
Copyright
© 2024 The Author(s)

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Footnotes

About This Column

Lawrence O. Gostin and Benjamin Mason Meier serve as the section editors for Global Health Law. Professor Gostin is a University Professor at Georgetown University, the Founding Linda D. & Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Center, and the Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. Professor Meier is a Professor of Global Health Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Senior Scholar at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. This column features timely analyses and perspectives on law, policy, and justice in global health.

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