New York/The Hague
As of 1 July 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that only a little less then 3 billion doses of vaccines have been administered worldwide so far. With only around 1% of people from low-income countries having received at least one dose, Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA) expresses concerns about the unsatisfactory fulfilment of the right to access safe, effective, and affordable vaccines.
In accordance with international law standards, everyone has the right to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health[1]. This right has been recognized in numerous international and regional legally binding instruments, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The ICESCR requires States Parties to achieve by all appropriate means, individually and through international assistance and cooperation, the full realization of the rights recognized in the ICESCR, including the right to health, without any discrimination.[2] Accordingly, States Parties have an obligation to protect human rights by, for instance, providing assistance, particularly in developing countries, and ensuring the “prevention, treatment and control of epidemic […] diseases”[3] and the universal, unhindered and timely access to quality, safe, efficacious and affordable vaccines. Equally, States Parties have an obligation to refrain from acting in a way that jeopardizes the full enjoyment of these rights. In addition to being distributed without any discrimination in all regions of the world, States should put all efforts to ensure that women and men, as well as girls and boys living in regions affected by armed conflicts and post-conflict situations, have access to vaccines. These internationally recognized standards have also been reiterated since the outbreak of the pandemic by various international bodies including the UN General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Economic and Social Council.
PGA also recalls Parliamentarians of the critical role they play in ensuring the fulfillment of the right to health. Most notably, lawmakers should encourage vaccination campaigns that are inclusive of women and girls and guarantee their safe and unhindered access to vaccines. PGA further welcomes the numerous statements made by Parliamentarians from all around to ensure universal access to safe and affordable vaccines, including:
- The Southern African Development Community Parliamentarians who called for measures to help Africa access COVID-10 vaccines.
- The ECOWAS Parliament who advocated for availability of vaccines for citizens in the sub-region.
- The ASEAN MPs who urged their governments to put human rights at center of the COVID-19 response.
- The Parliamentary Network to Combat HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Francophonie who invited Heads of States and government to commit to defining vaccines against the COVID-19 as “universal common goods.”
- The Parlatino, Parlacen, Parlandino, Parlasur and Parlamento Indigena who called for the universal production, purchase and access to COVID-19 vaccines in Latin America and the Caribbean.
- Members of the European Parliament who supported the speedy authorization of safe vaccines and a strategy based on the principles of equal access, affordability and safety.
Furthermore, PGA calls upon States to increase their efforts to ensure a truly global vaccination campaign that will be effective enough to stop the transmission of the virus and its variants, including the Delta and any other variants that might still emerge. PGA welcomes initiatives such as the commitment from the G-7 to donate 1 billion vaccine doses for low and low-middle income countries over the next year. However, this positive development should be followed up by additional commitments to ensure that much more vaccine doses would be made available towards the objective of universal vaccination by 2022.
PGA therefore urgently calls for an increase in the global efforts to ensure timely, universal, and equitable access to safe, effective, and affordable vaccines. As the G-20 stressed on 21 May 2021 in its Rome Declaration, an alliance between the public and private sector, as well as multilateral efforts, must be supported to ensuring that effective vaccines against all variants are produced worldwide. Intellectual property rights, including patent protection, must be applied safely and without undermining the right to health or access to technology. PGA welcomes the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator and its vaccines pillar COVAX, which is an important global collaboration between private and public entities to support the development and distribution of vaccines and will guarantee their availability to both higher and lower-income countries. We urge States to continue contributing to the ACT-Accelerator to bridge the current funding gaps and ensure its full capacity.
Finally, PGA fully supports the global sharing of vaccines doses that are approved by the WHO. PGA wishes to recall that approving and negotiating access to COVID-19 vaccines must be a thorough, fully transparent, and independent process that should only be guided by global health considerations and universal safety rather than any political and geostrategic concerns. While it is unquestionable that affordable, safe, and effective vaccines must be distributed without discrimination, PGA seizes this opportunity to remind States that any measures which would limit the opening of their borders to only a sub-set of the WHO-approved vaccines would only increase divisions worldwide and aggravate already existing tensions (see the Joint COVAX statement on the Equal Recognition of Vaccines here).
[1] For international instruments, see: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, art. 12.1; the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, art. 5 (e) (iv); the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, arts. 11 (1)(f), 12 and 14 (2)(b); the Convention on the Rights of the Child, art. 24; the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, arts. 28, 43(e) and 45 (c); the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, art. 25.
For regional instruments, see: African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, art. 16; the Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, art. 10; the European Social Charter, art. 11.
[2] ICESCR, art. 2.
[3] ICESCR, art. 12(2)(c).
