(Neo)Colonial Legacies, Health Equity & Global Disease Governance: A Critical Socio-Legal Analysis

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the limitations of global health law to effectively respond to infectious disease crises. Despite the existence of a treaty that allows for patents to be waived to promote global equitable access to vaccines, for instance, the Global South remains largely unvaccinated while many Global North countries have stockpiled vaccines and announced the end of the pandemic. This is particularly concerning for Global South countries, especially Caribbean small island developing states (SIDs) due to their socio-economic vulnerability to infectious disease outbreaks, which is compounded by their environmental vulnerability to the effects of climate change.

Moreover, notwithstanding the recognition of global power asymmetries, current efforts to revise and create new global health laws for better pandemic preparedness for the international community are predominantly being led by a small group of experts from the Global North. These manifestations of inequity have ignited discourse around decolonising global health, questioning whether the abiding legacies of colonialism and imperialism are undermining global health equity.

Focusing on Barbados and Jamaica, two Caribbean SIDs that have been making constitutional reforms, including removing the King of England as Head of State, this research will adopt a Critical Legal Studies theoretical framework to investigate how and to what extent (neo)colonialism and imperialism's political and economic legacies shape global infectious disease laws and policies and identify modes of resistance amongst Global South people. This project will be grounded in empiricism, adopting a socio-legal, qualitative case study methodological approach.

This first-of-its-kind research has practical and intellectual significance for global health. The world is at a pivotal moment where global health laws are being amended and created for better pandemic preparedness, providing a unique yet unprecedented opportunity to explore how countries in the Global South are engaging international law-making processes and the broader implications for health equity. This exploration is critical to understanding how to (re)design more effective global health laws for better governance. Moreover, the project will advance critical legal theories, focusing on the centrality of law in global health governance, a current gap in global health research.