Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Meier, Benjamin Mason
• Bueno de Mesquita, Judith
• Burci, Gian Luca
• Chirwa, Danwood
• Dagron, Stéphanie
• Eccleston-Turner, Mark
• Forman, Lisa
• Gostin, Lawrence O
• Habibi, Roojin
• Negri, Stefania
• Phelan, Alexandra
• Sekalala, Sharifah
• Taylor, Allyn
• Villarreal, Pedro A
• Yamin, Alicia Ely
• Hoffman, Steven J

Titel

Travel restrictions and variants of concern: global health laws need to reflect evidence

Ist Teil von

• Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 2022-03, Vol.100 (3), p.178-178A

Ort / Verlag

Switzerland: World Health Organization

Erscheinungsjahr

2022

Quelle

PAIS Index

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) spread in the early days of the pandemic, governments neglected World Health Organization (WHO) guidance and imposed travel restrictions. These public health measures employed varied levels of restrictiveness at national borders, in some cases banning all travel between countries. Where these border control measures were undertaken for domestic political reasons, enacted without consideration of public health evidence, they divided the world when solidarity was needed most.1 Such measures undermined global health law that countries have established as a foundation for preventing and responding to public health emergencies of international concern. With the emergence of the Omicron variant, national governments once again returned to international travel restrictions, posing challenges for the rule of law in global health governance. Future reforms of global health law must account for this continuing impulse to enact travel restrictions, ensuring that international legal obligations reflect evolving public health evidence. The International Health Regulations, 2005 revision; IHR (2005) govern how countries address collective threats in global solidarity; yet international travel bans can drive countries apart through economic isolation, trade disruptions, discriminatory restrictions and rights violations.2 Fearing that government actions would undermine the IHR at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Global Health Law Consortium in February 2020 examined the legality of targeted travel restrictions.3