Sharifah Sekalala
Professor
Director of EDI
Social Inclusion Champion
Global Health Law; Human Rights; International Law and Development
School of Law
S2.25, Social Sciences Building
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
United Kingdom
024 765 24492
I am an interdisciplinary researcher whose work is at the intersection of international law, public policy, and global health. I am primarily interested in global health crises and the impact of law in curbing inequalities. I often use a human rights framework in my analysis. I am a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS)
I am currently leading a Wellcome funded interdisciplinary research project on health apps in Sub Saharan Africa. The project team will evaluate the data protection regimes and engage with key stakeholders in Kenya, South Africa and Uganda, to establish the extent to which they protect their citizens’ health data, especially in cross-border Health activities. Focusing on law, bioethics, entrepreneurship, epidemiology and policy makers, the project aims to bring together various stakeholders to empirically investigate how health apps are operating in practice, whether new forms of regulation are adequate in responding to potential problems, how different stakeholders perceive the regulatory framework and how we can create better regulatory frameworks. My work won the Feminist Legal Prize in 2024 with Ania Zbyszewska for our work that called for a re imagining of supply chains in accordance with feminist approaches that place care at the centre of supply chains for pandemics as being central to imagining Global Health law.
I am interested in supervising doctoral students whose work broadly relates to Global Health Law.
Sharifah is a Professor of Global Health Law at the University of Warwick and the Director of the Warwick Global Health Centre. She is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work is at the intersection of international law, public policy and global health. Professor Sekalala is particularly focused on the role of human rights frameworks in addressing global health inequalities. Her research has focused on health crises in Sub-Saharan Africa, international financing institutions and the rise of non-communicable diseases and she has published in leading legal, international relations and public health journals.
Professor Sekalala is currently the PI on a Wellcome-Trust-funded project on digital health apps in Sub-Saharan Africa. Professor Sekalala is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FaSS) and she has consulted on human rights and health in many developing countries and worked for international organisations such as UNAIDS, the WHO and the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Her research has also been funded by the Wellcome Trust, GCRF, ESRC, Open Society Foundation and international organisations including the International Labour Organisation and the WHO. Sharifah also sits on the Strategic Advisory Network of the ESRC.
Sharifah holds a PhD in Law (Warwick, 2012), an LLM in Public International Law (Distinction in research, Nottingham, 2006) and an LLB Honours (Makerere University, Uganda 2004). She was called to the Ugandan Bar in 2005.
1.Sekalala S. Soft Law and Global Health Problems: Lessons from responses to HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis’ (Cambridge University Press, paperback version, 2018)
Peer reviewed Articles and Book chapters
| 2.Sekalala S, Chatikobo T. Colonialism in the new digital health agenda. BMJ Glob Health. 2024 Feb 27;9(2):e014131. doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2023-014131. PMID: 38413105; PMCID: PMC10900325. 3.Sekalala S, Lake S, Hodges S, Perera Y (2024) Navigating time equity: Balancing urgency and inclusivity in pandemic treaty negotiations. PLOS Glob Public Health 4(4): e0003118. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0003118 4.de Campos-Rudinsky, TC, Bosha, SL, Wainstock, D, Sekalala, S, Venkatapuram, S & Atuire, CA 2024, 'Decolonising global health: why the new Pandemic Agreement should have included the principle of subsidiarity', The Lancet. Global health. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(24)00186-4 5.Jay Shaw, Sharifah Sekalala,Amelia Fiske, ‘The Urgent Need for Health Data Justice in Precision Medicine, The American Journal of Bioethics, 24:3, 101-103, DOI: 10.1080/15265161.2024.2303141 |
6.Shirin Heidari, Els Torreele, Ahmet Metin Gülmezoglu, Sharifah Sekalala, Naomi Burke-Shyne, Gabrielle Landry Chappuis, ‘A gender-responsive Pandemic Accord is needed for a healthier, equitable future, The Lancet, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(23)02038-X.
7.Mark Eccleston-Turner, Gian-Luca Burci,Jonathan Liberman and Sharifah Sekalala, 'Implementation, compliance, and pandemic legal obligations: negotiations ought not focus on enforcement and sanction' (2023) Science vol 380(6647)
8.Judith Bueno de Mesquita, Claire Lougarre, and Lisa Montel Sharifah Sekalala, 'Lodestar in the time of coronavirus? Interpreting international obligations to realise the right to health during the COVID-19 pandemic' (2023) Human Rights Law Review vol 23(1)
9.Ania Zbyszewska and Sharifah Sekalala, 'Towards a feminist geo-legal ethic of caring within medical supply chains : lessons from careless supply during the COVID-19 pandemic' (2022) Feminist Legal Studies (Winner Feminist Legal Prize 2023)
10.Saveethika Leesurakarn, Sharifah Sekalala, N. Husen, Alessia Maccaro, Leandro Pecchia, Davide Piaggio, and Shirin Rai, 'On the universality of medical device regulations : the case of Benin' (2022) BMC Health Services Research vol 22(1)
11.Lisa Forman, Sharifah Sekalala and Benjamin Mason Meier, 'The World Health Organization, international health regulations and human rights law' (2022) International Organizations Law Review vol 19(1)
12.Judith Bueno de Mesquita, Gian Luca Burci, Danwood Chirwa, Stéphanie Dagron, Mark Eccleston-Turner, Alicia Ely Yamin, Lisa Forman, Lawrence Gostin, Roojin Habibi, Steven Hoffman, Benjamin Mason Meier, Stefania Negri, Alexandra Phelan, Sharifah Sekalala, Allyn Taylor, and Pedro Villarreal, 'Travel restrictions and variants of concern : global health laws need to reflect evidence' (2022) Bulletin of the World Health Organization vol 100(3)
13.Sharifah Sekalala, Benjamin Mason Meier, and Caitlin R. Williams, 'Global health governance through the UN Security Council : health security vs. human rights?' (2022) Australian Journal of International Affairs vol 76(1)
14.Sharifah Sekalala, Stéphanie Dagron, Lisa Forman, and Benjamin Mason Meier, 'Analyzing the human rights impact of increased digital public health surveillance during the COVID-19 crisis ' (2020) Health and Human Rights Journal vol 22(2)
15.Sharifah Sekalala, Alexandra Alvergne, Clare Chandler, Simukai Chigudu, Thomas Cousins, Clare Herrick, Ann Kelly, Sabina Leonelli, Javier Lezaun, Jamie Lorimer, Michelle Pentecost, and David Reubi, 'The changing climates of global health' (2021) BMJ Global Health vol 6(3)
16.Sharifah Sekalala, and Haleema Masud, 'Soft law possibilities in global health law' (2021) Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics vol 49(1)
17.Sharifah Sekalala, Belinda Rawson, Lisa Forman, Michael Parker, Katrina Perehudoff, and Maxwell Smith, 'An intersectional human rights approach to prioritising access to COVID-19 vaccines' (2021) BMJ Global Health vol 6(2)
18.Sekalala S, et al. ‘Decolonising human rights: how intellectual property laws result in unequal access to the COVID-19 vaccine’ (2021) BMJ Global Health 6:e006169. DOI: 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-006169.
19.Smith MJ, et al. (& Sekalala). ‘Should COVID-19 Vaccines Authorized for Emergency Use Be Considered “Essential” Medicines?’ (2021) Health and Human Rights Journal 23(1):145-150.https://www.hhrjournal.org/2021/06/should-covid-19-vaccines-authorized-for-emergency-use-be-considered-essential-medicines/.
20.Sekalala S, et al. An intersectional human rights approach to prioritising access to COVID-19 vaccines. BMJ Global Health 2021;6:e004462. DOI:10.1136/ bmjgh-2020-004462.
21.Sekalala S and Masud H. ‘Soft Law Possibilities in Global Health Law’ (2021) Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 49(1):152-155. DOI:10.1017/jme.2021.20.
22.Cousins T, et al (& Sekalala). ‘The changing climates of global Health’ (2021) BMJ Global Health 6:e005442. DOI:10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005442.
23.McGranahan M, et al (& Sekalala) 'Realising sexual and reproductive health and rights of adolescent girls and young women living in slums in Uganda: a qualitative study' (2021) Reproductive Health 18(1). DOI: 10.1186/s12978-021-01174-z.
24.McGranahan M, et al (& Sekalala), 'Rights based approaches to sexual and reproductive health in low and middle-income countries: a systematic review' (2021) PLoS One 16(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250976.
25.Munro VE, et al (& Sekalala): ‘Feminist judgments projects at the intersection' (2021) Feminist Legal Studies 29(2):251–261.
26.Sekalala S, et al. ‘Analysing the human rights impact of increased digital public health surveillance in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis’ (2020) Health and Human Rights Journal 22(2): 7-20. (Special Issue on Human rights and Big Data)
27.Sekalala S, et al. ‘Health and human rights are inextricably linked in the COVID-19 response.’ (2020) BMJ Global Health 0:e003359. DOI:10.1136/bmjgh-2020-003359
28.Sekalala S, ‘Categorising the gendered harms to caregivers during humanitarian emergencies: An analysis of law and practice during Ebola crises’ (2020) Social and Legal Studies DOI:10.1177/0964663920974433
29.Habibi R, et al (& Sekalala), ‘Do not violate the International Health Regulations during the COVID-19 outbreak’, (2020) The Lancet: DOI: 11016/S0140-6736(20)30373-1.
30.Taylor AL, et al (& Sekalala S), ‘Solidarity in the wake of COVID-19: reimagining the International Health Regulations’ (2020) The Lancet DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31417-3.
31.Sekalala S, Masud H, Bosco R, ‘Using human rights mechanisms to address corruption within the health sector,’ (2020) Glob Health Action. ;13(sup1):1699343.
32.Sekalala S and Harrington J, ‘Communicable Diseases, Health Security and Human Rights’ in Foundations of Global Health & Human Rights (Oxford University Press 2020).
| 33.Habibi R, et al (& Sekalala). ‘The Stellenbosch Consensus on Legal National Responses to Public Health Risks: Clarifying Article 43 of the International Health Regulations’ (2020) International Organisations Law Review 1-68. DOI: 10.1163/15723747-2020023. 34.Masud H, Gill P, Sekalala S, Oyebode O. ‘Tracking progress of tobacco control in Pakistan against the MPOWER package of interventions: Challenges and opportunities’ (2020) International Journal of Non-communicable Diseases 5(1): 16-21. |
35.Sekalala S and Kirya M. ‘A Critique of Corruption as Social Injustice in the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria: the example of Uganda’ in Adelman S and Paliwala A, Beyond Law and Development Resistance, Empowerment and Social Injustice (Routledge 2020).
36.Sekalala S and Haastrup T. ‘What have rights got to do with it? Evaluating “Human Rights as Practice within the Global Fund”,’ (2018) Global Health Governance 12(1): 75-86.
37.Sekalala S. ‘Who gets to sit at the table? Interrogating the failure of participatory approaches within a right to health framework' (2017) The International Journal of Human Rights 21(7): 976-1001.
38.Sekalala S. ‘Normative Considerations Underlying Global Health Financing:Lessons for the Framework Convention on Global Health’ (2015) Global Health Governance 9(1): 22-40.
39.Sekalala S and Kirya M, ‘Challenges in Multi-level Health Governance: corruption in the Global Fund’s operations in Uganda and Zambia’ (2015) Hague Journal on the Rule of Law 7(1): 141-151. DOI: 10.1007/s40803-015-0010-x.
40.Harrison J and Sekalala S. ‘Addressing the compliance gap? UN initiatives to benchmark the human rights performance of states and corporations’ (2015) Review of International Studies 41(5): 925-945. DOI:10.1017/S026021051500039X.
41.Sekalala S, Lisk F, and Bindenagel Šehović, A, ‘Health and Human Security: A wrinkle in time or a new paradigm?’ (2015) Contemporary Politics 21(1): 25-39.
42.Sekalala S. ‘Towards a better understanding of financing the right to health: A case study of the Global Fund’, in Essays on human rights: A celebration of the life of Dr. Janusz Kochanoswski. (Jus et Lux Poland 2014): 389-416.
43.Sekalala S. ‘Third world access to essential medicines and the WTO General Council Decision of 2003’ (2010) Kings Law Journal 21(1): 172-192.
UG Modules
- tba
| Title | Funder | Award start | Award end |
| AFTER?THE END: INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO LIVED EXPERIENCES IN THE AFTERMATHS OF?DISEASES, DISASTERS AND DRUGS IN GLOBAL?HEALTH (Wellcome Discovery Grant bid Led By Oxford) | Wellcome Trust | 01 Oct 2023 | 30 Sep 2031 |
| connaught - 20,400 canadian dollars in total | University of Toronto | 01 Sep 2021 | 31 Jul 2026 |
| There is no app for this: There is no app for this! Regulating the Migration of Health Data in Sub-Saharan Africa | Wellcome Trust | 01 Aug 2022 |
31 Jul 2025 |
| Mobility - Global Medicine and Health Research | Wellcome Trust | 17 Dec 2020 | 16 Dec 2021 |
| Human rights and corruption in health systems | World Health Organisation | 24 Aug 2018 | 31 Oct 2018 |
There is no App for that: Regulating the Migration of Health Data in Africa (Funded by the Novodisk Foundation and the Wellcome Trust (Eur 1,4 million)
With the dramatic increase in the collection of health data in recent years, health apps have been promoted as offering huge advances in the health of people in the Global South, but they also pose risks to privacy and ultimately to health outcomes. The project team will evaluate the data protection regimes and engage with key stakeholders in Kenya, South Africa and Uganda, to establish the extent to which they protect their citizens’ health data, especially in cross-border Health activities.
The interdisciplinary project led by Professor Sharifah Sekalala, Professor Bitange Ndemo and Professor Pamela Andanda seeks to analyse the regulation of health apps in Sub Saharan Africa in Uganda, Kenya and South Africa. Focusing on law, bioethics, entrepreneurship, epidemiology and policy makers, the project aims to bring together various stakeholders to empirically investigate how health apps are operating in practice, whether new forms of regulation are adequate in responding to potential problems, how different stakeholders perceive the regulatory framework and how we can create better regulatory frameworks.
Visit theproject page.
There is no App for that: Regulating the Migration of Health Data in Africa (Funded by the Novodisk Foundation and the Wellcome Trust (Eur-50,000)
Health apps are increasingly being used in Sub-Saharan Africa. These health apps move health data from users to third-party actors, who are often based in other jurisdictions, and this frequently means from the global south to the global north. As noted by the African Union, this happens because most African countries depend on non-African manufacturers and service providers for their mobile networks, located outside the continent.
Digital health apps create complex legal and ethical problems, because data derived from them can be used to violate people’s privacy rights and by creating the opportunity for strategic uses of data that further embed structural disadvantage. In this project I will explore the ways in which domestic regulation can address this problem.
Using three case study countries – South Africa, Kenya and Uganda – which were all early adopters of data protection laws, I will evaluate these laws in in relation to privacy, and the validity of reports that health apps are being designed to exceed the remit of this legislation.
Catalyst Fund GCRF Integrating Legal Empowerment and Social Accountability for Sexual Reproductive health and HIV Services for Young People in Selected Slum Areas in Uganda (Funded by GCRF -37,671)
Working with a domestic human rights organisation in Uganda, (CEHURD) and colleagues from Warwick Medical School, this project is an applied human rights project which analyses how adolescent women and young girls can use the human rights framework in order to gain sexual an reproductive health services. This project is methodologically novel as it aims to co-produce knowledge with local human rights organisations, and young girls and women, in the promotion of sexual and reproductive rights, thereby producing tangible benefits for the people who are our research participants.
The African Feminist Judgments Project
The African Feminist Judgment Project is coordinated by Dr Sibongile Ndashe (Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa, Johannesburg), Dr Sharifah Sekalala (Warwick Law School) and Professor Ambreena Manji (Cardiff Law School). It builds on similar projects (Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and USA) to draft and disseminate alternative judgments for important African landmark cases on a range of legal issues.
At the heart of the project are the following questions — what might we mean by a landmark case in the African context? What is feminist judicial practice in Africa and what might we want it to be? How might alternative feminist judgments contribute to African jurisprudence, legal practice and judicial decision-making? What are the specific Constitutional and historical contexts within which the project must be understood?
Pilot Project
Tobacco use is one of the biggest public health risks globally accounting for 7 million deaths annually. Many countries are trying to curb tobacco use by introducing laws which make it harder for people to access cigarettes. These laws have been met with strong opposition from tobacco companies, followed by court challenges in Canada, Australia, UK, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda. While some research has examined individual country cases, there has been no attempt to analyze the general trends of tobacco challenges in courts at the national level. Proposed as a pilot study, this research asks, ‘How do court challenges impact on countries attempts to create anti-tobacco legislation in commonwealth countries?’ Through a doctrinal analysis of court challenges and judgments, the research will examine patterns in these cases so as to find whether they are trends in the strategies that tobacco companies are using in this litigation, what is the role of the judiciary in promoting anti-tobacco legislation, and how government and civil society organizations can best respond proactively. Project findings will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, published online and presented to collaborators in 2018 as the basis of a comparative Investigator Award application to the Trust in 2019.
Leaving no one behind: Interdisciplinary workshop on Universal Health Coverage (April 2017)
Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is defined by the WHO to mean that all people receive the health services they need without suffering financial hardship when paying for them. UHC will be essential to ensure that African countries achieve their targets of reducing poverty and improving health under Sustainable Development Goal 1 and 3. The Institute of Advanced Studies, GRP on International Development and the Law School sponsored a multi-disciplinary workshop which focused on the legal, ethical, economic and epistemic, limits of universal health programmes. The workshop hosted a wide range of exciting talks from a number of scholars and practitioners who are working on UHC.
I try and communicate my work to public audiences through blogs, public policy briefs and media appearances. For instance, in my current project on the human rights impact of COVID-19, I was a principal interviewee in a BBC World Service documentary on legal and ethical questions concerning the supply of a potential COVID-19 vaccine, especially in developing countries. I was also interviewed by the Daily Telegraph for a piece on equitable health funding, , MSN, The Independent, on vaccines, by Reuters on how poor housing was creating inequity within lockdowns. I also wrote several blogs on the ways in which emergency laws could better protect vulnerable groups, such as indigenous groups, health workers and migrants.
I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD supervisees. However, please ensure that you have a research proposal which corresponds with the University of Warwick School of Law requirements.
I am particularly interested in supervising research students in the broad area of global health law.
Current PhD students:
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1.Arrin Lewis: Considering the value and pricing of CAR T-cell immunotherapies: Evaluating Article 53(c) exclusion of the European Patent Convention 2000 and its impact on the market for personalised medicines : 2022 – 2027
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2.Maria Weikardt Soares: Cotutelle student with the University of Dresden, The construction of Global South knowledge on digital health within international organisations(ESRC Scholarship 2023-2027)
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3.Kene Esom : Digital ID’s and the impact on LBTQ population: A case study of Kenya (
(Chancellors Scholarship2023 – 2028)
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4.Hadijah Namyalo Ganafa: The Identification Gap: Exploring the Gaps and Intersectional Disconnections in Digital Identification for Health in Uganda (Leverhulme Transform Scholarship 2023- 2027)
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5.Shajoe Lake : A TWAIL Analysis of Global Disease Governance to Promote Health Equity (ESRC DTP Scholarship 2024- 2029)
Human Rights Impacts of COVID-19
This work has been supported by an ESRC Impact Grant No to increase public awareness. I was one of the main interviewees in a BBC World Service documentary on legal and ethical questions about the supply of a potential COVID-19 vaccine, especially in developing countries. I was also interviewed by the Daily Telegraph for a piece on equitable health funding and by Reuters on how poor housing was creating inequity within lockdowns. I also wrote several blogs on the ways in which emergency laws could better protect vulnerable groups, such as indigenous groups, health workers and migrants.
I have also submitted written evidence to the UK Parliament on the impact of the UK’s COVID-19 emergency laws on human rights, both for UK nationals and for people abroad. These have been accompanied by accessible public policy briefs.