Legal

The right laws and regulations can save lives.

Above: Participants in “Law & Health Security: Strengthening Nigeria’s Legal Preparedness”. Credit – Resolve to Save Lives

We work with countries to strengthen legal frameworks to enable early and effective action to prevent epidemics.

How we work

For a country to respond effectively to public health emergencies, it needs both the clear legal authority to take decisive action and the flexibility to adapt to dynamic situations. This authority is important not only during times of crisis, but also to enact non-emergency laws that enable epidemic preparedness and strengthen national health security.

We provide guidance and technical assistance to ensure countries have laws and regulations in place to strengthen health security. We partner with governments, international and regional organizations, local lawyers and civil society to assess and revise national and subnational legal frameworks to comply with the International Health Regulations (IHR) (2005).

Guided by each country’s own National Action Plan for Health Security (NAPHS), our team of multilingual legal advisors and embedded consultants brings deep expertise from diverse legal systems to meet each country or jurisdiction’s unique needs. We support governments in designing and conducting health security legal reforms through:

Mapping and assessment of existing legislation

Stakeholder engagement and validation

Drafting or amending legislation

Supporting the passage of new or revised legislation

Our work enables countries to improve IHR (2005) capacities, as reflected in higher Joint External Evaluation (JEE) and State Party Self-Assessment (SPAR) scores. Strengthening these capacities means countries are better prepared to prevent, detect and respond to public health threats. By supporting improvements in these capacities, we ultimately help create stronger health security systems that can better protect local communities and global public health.

Our efforts to strengthen legal frameworks also support other Resolve to Save Lives initiatives, including those focused on subnational legislation, multisectoral coordination, public health emergency operations centers (PHEOC), national public health institutes (NPHIs), infection prevention and control (IPC), epidemic preparedness financing, IHR (2005) and NAPHS governance, and digital capabilities.