Associate Professor Miriam Cohen and PhD candidate Gaëlle Foucault will participate in a workshop organized by the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) on soft law in international law. Their presentation, entitled “Soft Law as Smart Power: an Empirical Analysis of the Influence of World Health Organization Norms,” will be part of the WHO project led by our co-founder, Full Professor Catherine Régis.

The current pandemic context clearly demonstrates the importance of better understanding the impact of the role of the WHO, the only international intergovernmental organization entirely dedicated to health. The WHO has the broad mandate to “bring all peoples to the highest attainable standard of health” and has significant normative power (binding and non-binding) to accomplish its mission. Our study, funded by the Georg Stellari Fund and the SSHRC, aims to analyze the WHO's leadership in transforming health policies within states. We will present the preliminary results of an analysis of the convergence of health actions during the pandemic between the WHO and three states (Canada, the United States, and France). Our analysis is based on timelines of formal decisions taken since January 1, 2020, with regard to four indicators: mask wearing, cross-border travel, quarantines, and gatherings. Our preliminary results demonstrate the importance of developing an informed perspective on the WHO's role in shaping health policies.

Miriam Cohen, Jean-Louis Denis, Catherine Régis, Pierre Larouche, Stéphanie Cadeddu and Gaëlle Foucault from H-POD will be discussing some of the major questions revolving the implications of International Organizations and their field of action in times of a pandemic. This pre-conference workshop is part of the Annual Meeting of the European Society of International Law – Organized by the Stockholm Centre for International Law and Justice (SCILJ). Learn more.

H-POD’s co-directors, Jean-Louis Denis and Catherine Régis as well as Miriam Cohen and Pierre Larouche are invited to join the discussion. On September 17, they will discuss their paper on the role of the World Health Organization and its leadership during a pandemic. During a pandemic of such scale and severity as Covid-19, there is demand for proactive and decisive political leadership (Ansell, Boin & Hart, 2014). A pandemic is a perfect example of an extreme context that also creates an ambiguous space, bundling together individuals, organizations, communities and whole societies. Leadership in such extreme contexts and ambiguous spaces has become a pre-eminent question in political and sociological literature(Hannah & Uhl-Bien, 2009; Ospina et al., 2020).  In order to reconcile these different requirements to effectively tame the pandemic, a new form of meta-systemic leadership is needed – one that combines clarity of goals and advice, solid expertise and effective networking with national leaders – in order to ensure the legitimacy and effectiveness of global public health interventions, like those of international organizations. Learn more.

The FGV Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on EU-South América Global Governance, in partnership with the Law Faculty of the University of Montreal joined forces to organize the webinar « Enhancing the Normative Leadership of the WHO in Brazil: FGV Direito Rio 2021 Field Results. » H-pod co-directions, Catherine Régis and Jean-Louis Denis, are guests speakers at this virtual event.

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Uniting 40 contributors from universities around the globe and from various disciplines, "Pandemic Societies" is a collection of essays which covers a wide range of areas, from the performing arts, sports, tourism, and cities to telework, local and international politics, science, and global health. It is the first book of its kind and is a must-read for anyone interested in reflecting from an interdisciplinary and global perspective on how COVID-19 has changed our lives. Learn more.

The COVID-19 health crisis has pushed the limits of WHO Member States' health systems and raised recurring questions about the WHO's role in global health governance. Considering the many global health challenges we face, what conclusions can be drawn about the WHO's leadership? This assessment is essential to better support the Organization, not only in times of crisis, but more broadly in its role of supranational governance. For this reason, H-pod organized a symposium addressing the challenges of WHO governance, the impacts and orientations of this Organization—particularly in Quebec and Canada—as well as the means to be prioritized in order to amplify the relevance and scope of the actions that result from it. Learn more.

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