Hello. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. My name is Gian Luca Burci. I am an adjunct professor of international law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, and in my former professional life, a lawyer in the United Nations system for almost thirty years, including ten years as legal counsel for the World Health Organization (WHO).
Abstract The pandemic of 'severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2' (sars-CoV-2) has raised unprecedented challenges for most international legal and policy regimes and we cannot yet foresee its long-term consequences. The legal and institutional regime to prevent and control the international spread of disease, based on the World Health Organization and the International Health Regulations (ihr 2005) has also been severely tested. Critics have challenged who's apparent politicization and the ineffectiveness of the ihr 2005 as a tool to coordinate the international response to covid-19. The ihr 2005 have codified the operational model of the who Secretariat at the time of their revision, but the assumptions about who's epistemic authority and the willingness of states parties to conform to who's lead have proven overoptimistic. Still, addressing some of the major weaknesses of the ihr 2005 could give them renewed momentum and nudge states towards a more coordinated and effective response to epidemics.
Alcohol is the sole major psychoactive substance with a huge negative public health and social impact without some form of international control grounded in a binding treaty. While existing rules of international law, in particular in the economic field, favour liberalisation and may hinder strong national alcohol control measures, we may be witnessing a turning of the tide due to the growing mobilisation against non-communicable diseases. The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control has been a ground-breaking development in this sense, and has led policymakers and advocates in a number of countries to raise the possibility of a similar convention on alcohol control. The present contribution compares tobacco and alcohol from this perspective and considers the feasibility of a dedicated international convention. It concludes that the political prospects of a movement in this direction are very dim at the present time; however, policy developments on other health problems and theoretical models emerging from constructivist international relations scholarship may open up promising perspectives for considering normative and institutional approaches that could strengthen the existing legal framework and facilitate political processes towards stronger forms of legalisation of global alcohol control.
I would like to thank Professor Dreyfuss for inviting me to participate in such an interesting panel and even more to applaud the family of late Professor Vagts for honoring his memory and keeping alive his scholarship through these annual events.
The election of the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General is governed by its Constitution in Article 31. Candidates must be appointed by the Health Assembly on the nomination of the Executive Board. Unlike other international organizations in which the decision-making process is largely informal—such as the IAEA and WTO—the WHO procedures were formalized in the 1990s to include: clear deadlines; an initial screening of all candidates; short-listing by secret ballot in case of more than five candidates; compulsory secret ballot voting both in the Board and the Assembly; and a limit of two terms of office of five years each. However, beginning in 2006, some regional groups strongly demanded the introduction of a compulsory rotation of the post of Director-General among the WHO's regions. The equally strong rejection of that request by other regional groups led to an increasingly polarized debate in the governing bodies of the WHO.
The Conference of the Parties to the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) adopted by consensus, at its fifth session held in Seoul from November 12 to 17, 2012, the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products. This instrument is the first protocol to be adopted within the framework of the FCTC and is open to participation by parties to the FCTC.
