Groningen Centre for Health Law

As soon as Donald Trump began his second term as US President, he started taking steps that will cause serious harm to global public health. On the day of his inauguration for a second term, Trump took action to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization (WHO).

In November 2023, an Italian regional Ethics Committee – whose opinion is decisive in the PAD access procedure – sought clarifications on the meaning of the life-sustaining treatment requirement by submitting an interpretative query to the Italian National Bioethics Committee (CNB).

On February 15, 2025, the Regional Council of Tuscany in Italy approved a legislative proposal regulating “medically assisted voluntary death” at the regional level, more commonly known as “assisted suicide”. With this law, Tuscany became the first Italian region to establish a local legal framework for assisted suicide while awaiting the enactment of national legislation - a framework that, despite numerous attempts, has never been approved.

Al met al is ‘medische neutraliteit’ niet alleen een kernbegrip binnen de medische ethiek, maar wordt het ook expliciet erkend binnen het oorlogsrecht en de mensenrechten. Tijdens gewapende conflicten versterken deze drie regimes elkaar en vormen zij gezamenlijk een normatief kader voor gezondheidszorg tijdens oorlog en in andere noodsituaties.

With WHO now seeing a dramatic reduction of funding, staff, and programming, low- and middle-income countries will be disproportionately impacted, as they will receive less financial and technical support for strengthening their health systems and health programs. This WHO support is desperately needed as health inequities rise across nations – in the control of infectious diseases and beyond.

De terugtrekking van de VS is uiteindelijk slecht voor de hele wereld. Minder steun voor de WHO betekent minder aandacht voor wereldwijde infectieziektebestrijding. Dit houdt bijvoorbeeld in: minder financiering en ondersteuning voor pandemische paraatheid – de voorbereiding van een land op de uitbraak van een infectieziekte.

The international human rights system, grounded in the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UN human rights treaties and resolutions, provides a strong normative and legal framework for these conversations. It is far from perfect but, in the spirit of hopeful futures, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

This blog post only reveals the tip of the iceberg: SMU and (the right to) health are connected in many more ways. As we are in the middle of the information age and effective technology sometimes passes us by, it is time to consider the structural impact of technological development, including social media use, on (the right to) health.

This moment is devastating - but it is also clarifying. It is a reminder that global health cannot rest on the whims of a single government. Our students will be the ones to build a more robust future for global health law, one that is not beholden to unreliable actors. Perhaps some of them will go on to be the leaders we need, taking with them these hard-earned lessons and applying them in ways we cannot yet imagine.

The U.S. withdrawal from aid programs creates a gap that could be filled by other global powers, particularly China. China has demonstrated its commitment to regional influence through initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and its support during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it donated Sinovac vaccines to Indonesia.