The Law of Responsibility and the World Health Organisation: A Case Study on the
West African Ebola Outbreak
#MMPMIDC7226899
Eccleston-Turner M
; McArdle S
Infectious Diseases in the New Millennium
2020[]; 82
(?): 89-109
PMIDC7226899
show ga
The delay between the WHO being made aware of the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West
Africa and declaring it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern
(PHEIC) has been the subject of some considerable criticism in the literature, as
well as in the Report of the Ebola Interim Assessment Panel commissioned by the
WHO, which stated that that ?significant and unjustifiable delays occurred in the
declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) by
WHO.? This paper examines this late declaration of a PHEIC for Ebola through the
lens of the law of responsibility, arguing that the WHO incurs responsibility for
this delay. The law of responsibility is long standing in international law as
the framework for providing redress for breaches of law. It gives rise to an
obligation to provide redress and ensures some form of culpability for a breach
of international law. In this paper we argue that the WHO does not merely have
the power to declare a PHEIC via the International Health Regulations (2005), but
also has a legal obligation to do so when the criteria are met. An obligation
which we argue, they breached in failing to declare the recent Ebola outbreak in
West Africa a PHEIC in a timely manner. This breach should then engage the law of
responsibility for the consequences of the delay. The paper argues, however, that
there exist substantial issues with the application of the principles of
responsibility to international organizations.
free
free
free
