ANZSIL Zoom Lecture: Chester Brown -An international fact-finding commission of inquiry into COVID-19?

An international fact-finding commission of inquiry into COVID-19?

Professor Chester Brown, University of Sydney

Abstract

On 18 May 2020, the World Health Assembly of the World Health Organisation (“WHO”) unanimously adopted a resolution in which it requested the Director-General of the WHO to “initiate, at the earliest appropriate moment”, a process of “impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation” in order to “review experience gained and lessons learned from the WHO-coordinated international health response to COVID-19”.  The World Health Assembly’s resolution is to be welcomed, although it leaves a number of questions unanswered.  These include the precise scope of the fact-finding inquiry, the timing of when any such inquiry would take place, and who would be charged with carrying out this investigation.  This webinar presentation will consider these issues, as well as the role of fact-finding in international dispute resolution more generally, and other pressing issues of international health governance facing the international community in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bio

Professor Chester Brown is Professor of International Law and International Arbitration at the University of Sydney Law School, and the Law School’s Director of Global Engagement.  He is also a Barrister at 7 Wentworth Selborne Chambers, Sydney, and an Overseas Member of Essex Court Chambers, London.  He teaches and researches in the fields of public international law, international dispute settlement, international arbitration, international investment law, and private international law.  He also maintains a practice in these fields, and has been involved as counsel in proceedings before the International Court of Justice, the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, inter-State and investor-State arbitral tribunals, as well as in inter-State conciliation proceedings and international commercial arbitrations.