240076 SE VM1/VM7 - The Crisis of the WHO and the Failure of the int. Community in the Global Health crisis (2021S)

The aim of the course is to discuss perspectives of global governance for health and of development in a critical perspective. With a particular focus on post-development approaches and feminist-postcolonial critiques, the seminar addresses the origins and features of the contemporary global health crisis. This is not only to issue that the contemporary crises management has dramatic effects on the situation of structurally marginalized people but also that COVID-19 has increased gender inequality and the need to tackle multiple forms of disadvantage especially in the global South.
Against this backdrop, the seminar’s starting point is: Corona is not a natural disaster. The spread of Corona is the consequence of blatant political failures - at the national, European, and global level: The Corona crisis illustrates in a drastic way that diseases do not stop at national borders but have a global dimension. Therefore, we will discuss if and in what sense the spread of Covid -19 demonstrates that states have been neglecting global responsibilities that stem from human right to health but also if and in what sense states have failed to support the WHO as a public institution with a global authority.