There is growing awareness among international lawyers as well as health scholars and policy-makers about the influence of public health considerations on the design and implementation of multiple international legal regimes, from human rights to investment law and from international technical standards to environmental law.  Yet talk of “global health law” as a distinct field of international law is contradicted by extreme fragmentation and conflicts or overlaps between legal regimes.  There is a need for a holistic reflection both on the operation of specific international legal regimes as well as on general principles and concepts underlying the role of health in international law.
 
In this panel discussion, which also coincides with the publication of the first systematic overview of the role of health as a normative value in international law, four academic experts and contributors to the book will present their insights on their respective fields, their mutual interaction and reflect on the future research agenda for this complex and burgeoning field of scholarship.

Chair: Gian Luca Burci, Adjunct Professor of International Law, Graduate Institute

Commentator: Brigit Toebes, Professor, Health Law in a Global Context, Groningen University

Panelists:

Contemporary Global Health Governance in a Normative Perspective
Suerie Moon, Director of Research, Global Health Centre, Graduate Institute

The Fight against Infectious Diseases as the Core of Global Health Law
Stefania Negri, Jean Monnet Chair in European Health, Environmental and Food Safety Law, University of Salerno

Global Health and the Human Rights Agenda
Therese Murphy, Professor of Law and Director of the Health & Human rights Unit, Queen's University Belfast

The Economics Challenge: Health and International Trade Law
Benn McGrady, Technical Officer (Legal), Department of Prevention of Non-Communicable Diseases, WHO