Seite - 533 - in VULNERABLE - The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19

CHAPTER F-2 The Plausibility and Resolvability of Legal Claims Against China and WHO under the International Health Regulations (2005) Sam Halabi* and Kumanan Wilson** Abstract Since the declaration of a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization on January 30, 2020, accu- sations have been levelled against both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for failures to ade- quately and effectively notify the world about the COVID-19 threat. These accusations have been followed by calls for international sanctions, withdrawal of contributions to WHO’s work, and multi- lateral calls for investigations into the pandemic’s origins. Against a backdrop of increasingly bellicose rhetoric from governments, this chapter sets forth the most straightforward legal framework for resolving disputes about PRC and WHO actions: the International Health Regulations (2005). All disputing parties are members of the agreement, which provides specific mechanisms for dispute resolu- tion. The chapter carefully assembles the known timeline from the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, PRC, to the PRC’s noti- fication to WHO, to actions taken thereafter. It identifies the possible * Manley O. Hudson Professor of Law at the University of Missouri as well as a scholar at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. ** Specialist in general internal medicine, and senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital, innovation advisor at Bruyère Research Institute, and Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa.