Global Duties in Crisis Response: A Duty to Help,and a Duty Not to Harm Global Access to COVID-19 Vaccines?

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments widely recognized a duty to ensure global access to vaccines. What this duty entailed, however, became highly contested. I highlight how different actors formulated this duty and the political consequences that this duty-making had during the pandemic and its aftermath. I show that wealthy countries acknowledged a duty to share vaccine doses, while activists and Global South governments formulated a duty to share the ‘vaccine recipe’. I suggest moreover that the pandemic also facilitated the emergence of a negative duty ‘not to hoard vaccines’—in addition to a duty to help. I argue that global crisis response should seek to mobilize global solidarity initiatives (duty of charity) and simultaneously limit the negative consequences of countries’ own domestic responses (duty of justice).