Healthcare workers’ freedom of movement in times of pandemics: an emerging norm of customary international law
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: A shortage of healthcare workers can hinder the ability to prepare for and respond to global security threats caused by diseases that are prone to pandemics. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the shortage of healthcare workers became a growing concern worldwide. Recognizing these challenges, countries adopted measures to ensure healthcare workers' freedom of movement in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the WHO continues the negotiation process to reform the 2005 International Health Regulations and to adopt a new Pandemic Treaty, with one key provision relating to healthcare workers' mobility, questions remain as to whether States will actually adopt a binding international legal instrument or whether its effectiveness will be watered down by the intrinsic vulnerabilities of an international legal system that has (too) often been unable to tame geopolitical interests. Considering these challenges, we assessed the emergence of a norm of customary international law allowing the free movement of healthcare workers during pandemics. METHODS: Our study examined the laws and policies adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic concerning healthcare workers' mobility in 10 countries, representing all continents. The country selection was based on regional representation and a preliminary analysis indicating their early adoption of measures related to healthcare workers' mobility. Temporal limits were set. To gather relevant data, we employed various methods including research databases, media sources, and the COVID-19 Law Lab database. RESULTS: Our research identified and assessed instances of state practice and evidence of opinio juris to determine whether a norm of customary international law mandating states to ensure healthcare workers' freedom of movement during pandemics exists. The findings indicate a strong consensus towards ensuring the free movement of healthcare workers in times of pandemics as a way to respond to outbreaks of disease. Within months, Argentina, Colombia, Kenya, South Africa, India, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, ten nations representing most regions of the world, recognized, as law, the practice of excluding healthcare workers from prohibitions on movement. CONCLUSION: Ultimately, this discussion is critical for global health because if a norm does exist in this regard, it will further strengthen pandemic legal preparedness efforts. As such, it becomes clear that the reform of the 2005 International Health Regulations and/or the adoption of a new pandemic treaty will bolster the strength of this emerging norm of customary international law and crystallize it. These legal instruments would propel a norm that is already in the process of formulation into existence. Thus, crystallizing a norm that is otherwise emerging among states.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.073 | 0.130 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.041 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.014 | 0.013 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".