Beyond dependency: Ethical health sovereignty and global justice after the pandemic treaty.

Authors

Chiamaka Henrietta Onyebuchi, Jiyong Jin

Published in

Global public health. Volume 21. Issue 1. Pages 2725429. Dec 31, 2026. Epub Sep 26, 2026.

Abstract

The inequities observed during the COVID-19 pandemic were not an accident. They reflect deeper patterns of injustice already embedded in rules, financing models and power arrangements in global health governance. This paper argues that the paradigm of ethical health sovereignty offers a moral countermodel to the dependency shaping global health relations. It examines how sovereignty, solidarity and justice are being reinterpreted after the pandemic by drawing on the WHO Pandemic Agreement (A78/10, 2025) and Africa's regional responses through the African Union and Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. The Agreement represents a partial moral advance by acknowledging equity and shared responsibility while still leaving hierarchy intact through voluntarism and sovereignty-based limits. In contrast, Africa's pooled procurement, regulatory harmonisation and coordinated diplomacy show solidarity as shared governance rather than charity. The paper concludes that global health equity requires redesigning governance so that fairness is built into institutions and sovereignty is understood as shared and cooperative decision-making.

PMID:
42800018
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 27 Sep 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.