Study of the international health law-making processes, regulation of international health services, trade in hazardous waste and products, including persistent organic pollutants, prior informed consent regimes for chemicals, and trade in ozone depleting substances.

International legal processes of interest might include the Rotterdam Convention, the Basel Convention on Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes, the Montreal Protocol to the Vienna Convention on the Protection of the Ozone Layer, and various oil spill or transboundary pollution prevention and liability regimes, as well as the World Health Organisation. Also of interest are recent WTO Panel Reports on Asbestos and other trade issues.

International Sustainable Development Health Law focuses on the implications of international economic, social and environmental legal regimes for several areas relevant to global health. It is the study of the international health law-making processes, regulation of international health services, trade in hazardous waste and products, including persistent organic pollutants, prior informed consent regimes for chemicals, and trade in ozone depleting substances.

International legal processes of interest might include the Rotterdam Convention, the Basel Convention on Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes, the Montreal Protocol to the Vienna Convention on the Protection of the Ozone Layer, and various oil spill or transboundary pollution prevention and liability regimes, as well as the World Health Organisation. Also of interest are recent WTO Panel Reports on Asbestos and other trade issues.

This year’s latest projects will include Health Security and ISDL, corporate social responsibility and medical industries and the Americas Health and Environment Impact Assessment Project.  Our work will be ongoing in the areas global pandemic management, intellectual patent law and essential medicines and the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

The CISDL, in partnership with the IISD and the UNEP, has undertaken a research and capacity building initiative in collaboration with legal research centres across Latin America and the Caribbean. The project is advised by the OAS, and focuses on how to translate the results of integrated assessment of trade agreements into new regulations in Latin America and the Caribbean, and on how to strengthen law making and implementation capacity of sub-regional environment and development institutions. The preparatory work for this project has resulted in the preparation of a journal article, published in the Fordham Journal of International Law, on the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and a new book, Beyond the Barricades: The Americas Trade and Sustainability Agenda (Ashgate 2005). The project began through a meeting that was held parallel to the Americas Trade and Sustainable Development Forum in Miami, Florida in November, 2003, which also led to a commissioned report for Foreign Affairs Canada. With support from Environment Canada, the ACA Project hosted an Experts Workshop at the McGill Faculty of Law in March, 2004, on assessment methods, common hemispheric sustainable development law research priorities, and institutional capacities. The project also hosted a Roundtable Dialogue at the University of Ottawa Law Faculty in March, 2004. A ‘Synergy Report’ was completed and published on-line. Then, with support from the IDRC, two of the Latin American partners represented the project in consultations at the Health and Environment Ministers of the Americas meetings (HEMA), in June 2005 in Mar del Plata, Argentina. To follow up, the CISDL and the Fundacion Ecos of Mercosur hosted an International Expert Panel at the UNNE Faculty of Law in Corrientes, Argentina, which was very well attended and reported in the press and on national radio, and a Partners Workshop to discuss the proposed project in Mercedes, Argentina, in November, 2005. This has led to a full proposal being submitted to IDRC in 2006, which proposes to undertake, among five core partner institutions and three associates, a four-year research initiative to examine how health and environment impact assessment laws have been applied to economic liberalisation led development projects in the Americas, and make recommendations for sub-regional and hemispheric eco-health impact assessment laws.

Further Information

One of the most important issues at the nexus of trade and public health is the dispute that surrounds the WTO agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and access to essential medicines.  Preliminary legal research in this area led to a chapter looking at South African litigation that was published in 2005.   Research will continue in this area in 2006-7 with a legal paper examining the current state of international litigation around generic antiretrovirals.

As the international medical community coordinates the global response to human cases of H5N1 avian influenza, the CISDL Health Programme will continue to monitor the evolving legal situation.  In the fall of 2006, the Health Programme will launch a concept paper outlining the international legal issues implicated by avian influenza management.  And, in acknowledgement that HIVAIDS epidemic continues unabated, the Health Programme will work with the International Journal of SDL and Policy on a special edition focusing on HIVAIDS.

Since the inception of the CISDL, the Health Programme has been interested in developing the concept of ‘health security,’ in particular in relation to the spread of infectious disease. In 2006, Lead Counsel Maya Prabhu and Legal Research Fellow Kathryn Garforth began work on a legal brief addressing the international legal implications of a future influenza pandemic including those for international patent law and the Biosafety Protocol. A draft will be prepared for publication as a law journal article or a chapter in a new book.

Corporate Social Responsibility:

In conjunction with CISDL`s CSR project, the Health Programme will be examining the role of CSR principles for industries involved with the provision of heath services.

The ratification of the FCTC in 2005 was a turning point in international public heath, representing the first time that the WHA used its international treatymaking powers in the service of public health.  Over the next two years, the Health Programme will evaluate the successes and failures in implementation of the FCTC at the domestic level.

One of the most important issues at the nexus of trade and public health is the dispute that surrounds the WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (“TRIPS”) and access to essential medicines.  Preliminary legal research in this area led to a chapter that was published in the CISDL-edited book, Sustainable Development in World Trade Law (Kluwer Law International, 2005). Outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza, caused by the H5N1  strain, have raised concerns that the world may be moving towards another influenza pandemic.  As part of its response to this concern, the WHO is considering international responses to manage the epidemic and ways to expedite the development of pandemic vaccines.  A legal brief forthcoming in the spring outlines the implications of a potential pandemic on relevant international legal regimes including patent and biosafety laws.

In 2003, based on a legal research paper on Precaution, World Trade Law and Sustainable Development, a panel event was held at the McGill Law Faculty. This resulted in two law journal articles, one on the WTO Asbestos case, published in the Oxford Journal of Environmental Law, and one on precaution and risk analysis in the WTO, published in the Queen’s Law Journal. It also led to a chapter for a peer reviewed book on the international and domestic implications of new health and environment law, published by Yale University Press. A Senior Research Fellow is taking this research forward and contributed a chapter to the CISDL-edited book, Sustainable Development in World Trade Law (Kluwer Law International, 2005).

Maya Prabhu (http://www.cisdl.org/people/prabhu.html) is the Lead Counsel of the Health Programme.  She was a practicing litigator in New York for several years and as of July 2006 will be a psychiatry resident at Yale School of Medicine.

Research fellows with the Health Programme include Kathryn Garforth and Ali Chow. Also working with the Programme are Hari Suthan and Debbie Gourgy

Other CISDL members who will cooperate with and lead projects in the health area include Sumudu Atapattu, Lead Counsel of the Human Rights and Poverty Eradication Programme, Kent Nnadozie , Lead Counsel of the Natural Resources Programme and Christine Frison, Legal Research Fellow.

International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)

United Nations Environment Programme UNEP

Selected Book Chapter

Maya Prabhu, Lead Counsel, International Health Law, CISDL and Kathryn Garforth, Legal Research Fellow, Biodiversity Law, CISDL, “International Public Health and Trade Law” in Sustainable Development in World Trade Law, M. Gehring & M.C. Cordonier Segger, eds. (London: Kluwer Law International, 2005), Preface by: Prof. Margaret Somerville, Professor, McGill Law Faculty, Director, McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics & the Law.

Selected Legal Brief

“The Principle of the Precautionary Approach to Human Health, Natural Resources and Ecosystems: Recent Developments in International Law Related to Sustainable Development,” J. Hepburn, reviewed by M.W. Gehring & M.C. Cordonier Segger, Working Paper for Foreign Affairs Canada (Montreal: CISDL, 2005).