Assessing the viability of access and benefit-sharing models of equitable distribution of vaccines in international law

A vaccine is key to the COVID-19 global response strategy. However, it is not yet clear how any COVID-19 vaccine will or ought to be distributed, despite significant issues of fairness, equity, and justice. Developing countries may not have access to a COVID-19 vaccine without a governance framework guiding international allocation. It is likely that such a framework for vaccine distribution for COVID-19 will be developed through the World Health Assembly (WHA), with calls from governments already for this to happen. To date, there is only one existing international legal framework for the distribution of vaccines and other medical countermeasures, developed in the context of access and benefit-sharing (ABS) laws under the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity and its supplementary Nagoya Protocol. ABS forms the conceptual basis for the WHO's Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (PIP) Framework, the only dedicated ABS framework for pandemic vaccines. As a result, the PIP Framework provides a potentially useful starting benchmark to analyse a potential COVID-19 vaccine distribution framework. This project will assess the suitability of the ABS mechanism for COVID-19 vaccine distribution. This project uses responsive doctrinal legal analysis to assess the extent to which ABS can provide a legally robust framework on which to model the ethical global distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine. The project will rapidly publish its findings to help inform the development of a COVID-19 vaccine distribution strategy through the WHA and will publish a comprehensive analysis of the suitability of ABS mechanisms for future pandemic response.