The World Health Organization Legal Regimes and the Shaping of Nigeria’s Health Law and Policy

Abstract

Global health governance concerns the collective responses needed within the public health community to effectively tackle the shared challenges arising in an increasingly connected world. It is a truism that promoting a robust health infrastructure is critical to the attainment of good health and wellbeing. Yet the legal infrastructure – the laws and policies that empower and obligate as well as limit government and private action concerning health, has been neglected in the mainstream literature. This is because health infrastructure has focused more on physical structures of public health agencies such as clinics, hospitals and the human resources that operate them. The purpose of the study was to explore the extent to which the World Health Organization legal regimes such as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (2003) and the Revised International Health Regulations, have impacted on health law and policy in Nigeria. It posits that the various conventions and regulations adopted, which were subsequently ratified and declared applicable to Nigeria, had been domesticated. However, the lack of respect for the rule of law has stymied the maximisation of the expected benefits from such legal regimes. It concludes that the World Health Organization should develop a programme for public health law capacity-building and policy surveillance to ensure continuous and organised efforts to assist member states including Nigeria to strengthen their legal infrastructure.