Institutionalizing the Duty to Rescue in a Global Health Emergency
This chapter argues that the moral underperformance of wealthy states and pharmaceutical companies in the current pandemic is a predictable result of an institutional failure: the lack of a well-designed international institution that would “perfect” imperfect duties to prevent and mitigate harm to distant strangers. Wealthy states and pharmaceutical companies have publicly acknowledged that they ought to do something to aid pandemic responses in less wealthy countries, for example by supplying vaccines and ventilators, but for the most part their efforts have been meager and uncoordinated. The problem is that imperfect duties are indeterminate as to exactly what the duty-bearer is required to do. The solution is to develop an international institution that would clearly identify duty-bearers and recipients of aid, specify the content of the duties, achieve a fair distribution of the costs of fulfilling the duties, and supply effective mechanisms for compliance with the assigned duties.
