A Role for International Law in Containing COVID-19: The Right to Health

From the perspective of international human rights law, the right to health is important with respect to the international COVAX vaccine-supply scheme. Although many States with sufficient resources have prioritized access to future vaccines through bilateral agreements with vaccine manufacturing companies over multilateral cooperation between States, it is almost universally believed that only multilateralism would enable the eventual eradication of COVID-19 from the world.

There are two kinds of legal grounds for the right to health in international law from which legal obligations emanate, even if COVAX itself is not legally binding. One is the framework of international human rights law in general, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Another legal ground is the immediate obligations prescribed in the ICESCR.