Health as tipping point in international law

In the first part of the chapter, I will propose a critique of the way in which international legal doctrine has tackled the issue of health, missing the connections between the individual right to health and global health and failing to locate the debate within a broader context, which inevitably includes the environment. The lack of an autonomous field of ‘global’ or ‘international’ health law does not explain the silence of the law concerning environmental matters as intersecting health issues. In the ‘critique,’ I will illustrate the piecemeal approach to health, considered in all its facets. I will then briefly reflect on the relation between the human right to health and global health, arguing that they are not in antithesis, and, as it was contended, that global health policy is more than just securing human rights, it also entails duties. My main argument in the critique is that the weaknesses underlying the system depend on the fact that international law, in its current state of the art, is anthropocentric and patriarchal. This argument echoes feminist concerns, which I thoroughly endorse, pointing out that it is not only the male structure of international law that has to worry, but also the human-centered (adjective that should be linked to a part of humanity, as I will further explain) structure of international law, which misses the point of embracing eco-centric considerations, according to which human beings are an essential part of nature. In part 2, the critique builds the foundations for possible alternatives to emerge. My utopia is that an eco-centric approach to international law, which changes the perspective from humans to the environment, and appreciates the intersections between the individual human right to health, global health and the environment, the latter eventually embracing the previous ones. This change of perspective has the potential to expand to all fields of international law. I will examine the complexity of a similar commitment for international legal scholarship and discuss possible scenarios in dealing with communicable diseases and also contextualize two concepts in international law in the field of health, unravelling their underexplored potential, namely common concern of humankind (CCHK) and common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR). EventuallyIn the final part, I will conclude offer some thoughts on the possibility to conceive a ‘cosmological’ health law which recalls Plato’s ‘cosmological medicine’ and responds to the challenge launched by some scientists who started to talk about ‘planetary health.’