The Draft International Covenant on the Right to Development and Its Implications for Cooperation in Global Health Crises

During the COVID-19 pandemic, global cooperation arrived at an impasse, illustrated by the resistance of industrialized States to allow vaccines-related knowledge transfer to their economically less advantaged partners. One pertinent example is the EU, withholding its waiver of the TRIPS Agreement for vaccines and related medicines and thereby impeding knowledge transfer to States in need – an act that has also been referred to as ‘vaccine apartheid’. In the meantime, a new legal instrument intending to address in broader terms the faltering international cooperation emerged on the horizon: the Draft International Covenant on the Right to Development (DICRTD). Concerning health, the DICRTD’s preamble already recalls Arts. 1 (3), 55, and 56 UN Charter to take joint and separate action in cooperation with the UN to promote solutions of, inter alia, health problems. Reflecting on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, the preamble also points out health emergencies and health crises as serious obstacles to the realization of the right to development. This contribution seeks to critically assess the potential of the future DICRTD to address global health crises through cooperation. Against this backdrop, it analyses the current legal status of the duty to cooperate, the potential transformative impact of the DICRTD on this legal status, and the effectiveness of the DICRTD’s implementation mechanism.