International Health Regulations (IHR)

When you land at Mumbai airport after an international flight, you may have filled a health declaration or walked past a thermal scanner. That small routine is one end of a global legal system. At the other end is an office in Geneva deciding whether an outbreak in a distant country is a danger to all of us. The International Health Regulations are the rulebook that connects the two. This topic asks who must report what, to whom and how fast, and what happens when the answer is an international emergency.

In two minutes

The International Health Regulations (2005) are binding rules adopted under Article 21 of the WHO Constitution that require states to detect, assess and report public health events, allow the WHO to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, and limit the trade and travel measures states may take in response.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Public International Law on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.