Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
at the same time, even the wHo in the case of SarS shows that the new power
of international organisations is incomplete. Its innovations were in accord with the
collective preference of its state members, even if not canada and china at the time.
even with the revised IHr, states remain key to managing outbreak events. the
SarS precedent may not extend to less lethal and communicable diseases such as
malaria and HIv/aIDS. It has apparently not increased state compliance with hard
law health regimes. while even the most powerful United States complies with its
G8 health commitments along with the lesser members, the level of compliance
is variable and still modest relative to the costs that the global community incurs
from the current health governance regime. and Indonesia has recently wielded its
sovereignty to threaten the wHo's long-established virus-sharing regime.
However, sovereignty as the defining principle of the global health governance
system is eroding. Global health initiatives reduce the sensitivity to such erosions of
sovereignty. the concepts of health as a human right, rights-based social action, and
human security are all acquiring greater normative appeal and conferring legitimacy
on responses and innovations that come from actors beyond the state. all make
the individual rather than the state the ultimate referent of value, in a world where
sovereign states are functionally no longer always the optimum actors to enhance
human life and health. However, still unanswered is the question of who beyond the
state has the responsibility to respond to the rights that all individuals in the world
presumably possess, even if alternative rights cultures affirming collective duties
are starting to enter the new normative mix. and more operational precepts such as
'vaccinate the most vulnerable first wherever they may be' are still a long way from
assuming centre stage.
the movement from state sovereignty, through rights of redistribution among
states and people, to a new world of global rights and responsibilities for all individuals
has only just begun. there is no clear sign that the latter will win out in the end.
the same is true for its institutional equivalent of multiple, networked, effective,
legitimate, embedded global governance. even so, the transformational movement
toward a world defined by global health sovereignty is clearly underway.
References
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Celebrity Diplomacy
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Dewitt, David and John J. Kirton (1983).
Canada as a Principal Power: A Study in Foreign
Policy and International Relations
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Fidler, David P. (2004).
SARS: Governance and the Globalization of Disease
. (new York:
Palgrave Macmillan).
Fratianni, Michele, Paolo Savona, and John J. Kirton, eds. (2007).
Financing Development:
The G8 and UN Contribution
. (aldershot: ashgate).
Garrett, laurie (2007). 'the challenge of Global Health.'
Foreign Affairs
. <www.
foreignaffairs.org/20070101faessay86103/laurie-garrett/the-challenge-of-global-health.
html> (September 2008).
