Distributive Struggles in Global Health

Postcolonial Structures of Domination in Law

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.1590/2179-8966/2025/88068

Global health, like global law, the global economy or global politics, is a global functional system. The law of this communication system transcends the paradigm of the international. The UN Human Rights Council and especially the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) correctly pointed out to the post-colonial legacy and the resulting unequal distribution of health care. However, its understanding of the post-colonial lines of dominance in the sense of a legal succession as juridical continuities is too narrow. The postcolonial question is about critically reflecting on iterations of coloniality. Genealogy and current manifestations of patterns of postcolonial dominance can only be adequately analysed by differentiating between the Global South and the Global North – as fields of forces heterogeneous in themselves – and taking into account the specific vulnerabilities of subalterns.