 Thank you very much. First of all, let me thank you, the conveners of the conference, Laura Isgorova and Per Chesterfield, for the kind invitation to participate in the webinar, and also you, Dr. Yotava, for sharing this panel that I'm delighted to share with other Italian colleagues. Now, turning to my presentation, I'll try to offer and stimulate in the audience some critical reflections on the adequacy and effectiveness of the international legal instruments available today to protect public health worldwide in the face of global risks posed by infectious diseases. Recent outbreaks of emerging and newly identified communicable diseases like SARS and COVID-19 now, and the violent reemergence of known ones like Ebola, have lit the spotlight on the compelling need to guarantee a coherent global response to serious health threats of international concern. With the dramatic toll of human lives taken so far, the outbreak of COVID-19, which was declared a public emergency of international concern on 30 of January 2020, and then a pandemic on 11th of March, is the latest testimony to the need for coordinated response through the application of the only legally binding instrument of global school, that is the WHO International Health Regulations. These regulations were adopted for the first time in 1951 by the World Health Assembly under Article 21 of the WHO Constitution to provide the first universal and coherent legal regime of global surveillance and control of quarantineable diseases. They were later amended in 1969 and underwent a major revision in 2005 when it became evident that the narrow scope of the regulations of 1969 made them no longer fit for purpose. To remedy all relevant shortcomings, the revised regulations set the new global health governance framework with a view to sharing responsibilities and fulfilling the duty to cooperate internationally to avoid major public health emergencies. Within this framework, the regulations also set up a challenging interplay between public health goals and other collective interests as human rights protection, freedom of trade, environmental safety, and international security. Today, in line with the all hazards approach, the regulations encompass a significantly broader spectrum of infectious diseases and also extend to the natural, accidental, or deliberate release of biological, chemical, or radio nuclear materials, hence conferring on the WHO the competence to address any public health risk, be it caused by traditional communicable diseases, new or emerging ones, or any other disease which may spread internationally and represent a serious risk to global public health. Sorry. Among the key provisions of the regulations, I wish to single out those which are crucial for the achievement of the regulations objective, namely to prevent, protect, against, control, and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease in ways that are commensurate with and restricted to public health risks and which avoid unnecessary interference with international traffic and trade. First of all, under Article 6, states are mandatory requested to promptly notify within 24 hours events detected by national surveillance systems which qualify as possible public health emergencies of international concern. It has serious, sudden, unusual, unexpected events carrying implications for public health beyond the affected states' national borders and requiring immediate international action. Under Article 12, the responsibility of determining whether a public health event falls within this category lies with the WHO Director General who seeks the views of an emergency community, which is an advisory body providing technical advice and views on the gravity of the situation. Once the Director General has declared the existence of a fake, temporary recommendations are issued and they are communicated to the state's parties together with information on any health measure adopted by the states directly concerned by the event. Article 43 of the regulations allows state parties to adopt public health measures additional to those recommended by the WHO, provided that such measures are not more restrictive international traffic that any other reasonably available alternative will do and that states report such measures within 48 hours from their implementation and provide the scientific evidence-based justification for their adoption. Now it is known that measures adopted under Article 43 have been the object of debate and controversy with regard to the required for balance between public health needs and human rights protection. For example, following the overreaction of third states to the Ebola outbreak, international organizations such as the United Nations of the African Union urged states to lift all total bans on travel and trade because they were adversely impacting on the human rights of the affected populations. Now COVID-19 pandemic has revitalized the scholarly debate on the limits and shortcomings of the international health regulations, especially with regard to the consequences of state parties' non-compliance with the obligations stemming from, for example, from Article 643 and the related lack of sanctioned and enforcement powers of the organization under both the WHO constitution and the regulations. Now the international response to COVID-19 questions once again the overall fitness of the whole system and in this regard I would like to focus on a few controversial issues. First of all, compliance with Article 6, obligation of prompt notification. It was reported that the outbreak of the new coronavirus was detected in China at the end of November, early December 2019 that China notified the event only on the 31st of December and shared crucial information and data on the true mortality rate and the characteristics of the virus in later. According to a good number of politicians, lawyers and scholars, this negligent behavior delayed the deployment of the international mechanism of surveillance and control under the regulations and caused irreparable damage to third states. But even assuming that there was a flagrant violation of Article 6, is there enough uncontroversial evidence to prove China's responsibility towards the other affected states? And I would say in these circumstances towards the international community at large, who would assess this responsibility and eventually impose sanctions? Now we know that Article 56 of the regulations provides for possible resort to an international dispute settlement mechanism which has never been used to find history of the regulation and this will give you an idea of its usefulness. But consistently with international law and the principle of consensual jurisdiction, this would require China's acceptance of the jurisdiction of any possible arbitrary tribunal. And the same is true for the hypothesis of suing the International Court of Justice, apart from the fact that it would be really challenging to find an appropriate legal basis of jurisdiction to sue the court. And even if we wanted to consider solution inspired to the so-called securitization of health, China's permanent member status within the Security Council is enough to prevent and stop any possible discussion, let alone the adoption of sanctions. Second point, risk assessment and management under Articles 12 and 13 of the regulations. The first time the IHR emergency committee convened was on the 22nd of February, but the Director General declared that the COVID outbreak was a public health emergency of international concern only in the second meeting which took place on the 30th of January, although he had all the authority to do so independently of the advice of the committee. So why was this risk assessment so fallacious at the beginning? Had China provided all available information? Was this allegedly delayed caused by political reasons or whatever? Now on the 20th of January the WHO also issued temporary recommendations which did not recommend any travel or trade restriction based on the current information available and I stress this. These recommendations requested China to conduct exit streaming at international airports and ports with the aim of early detection of and again stress symptomatic travelers for further evaluation and treatment. However, notwithstanding the important scientific discoveries made on the new virus and its transmission dynamics, these recommendations were never revised or updated and after two months the emergency committee met only yesterday. I must confess I didn't find any reports so far. Of course, such a prolonged silence is puzzling and can imply some consequences on the assessment of the legitimacy of additional public health measures adopted under Article 43 and moving to this to compliance of this provision together with Article 3, paragraph 1 of the regulation which requires that states parties respect human rights and implementation of the regulations. We must observe that several states adopted additional restrictive measures including a ban on international travel, strict social distancing measures, compulsory quarantine and even lockdown. Not all of these states reported such measures to the WHO. Not all of these measures had a scientific evidence-based justification since some of them were adopted on the basis of precaution in the absence of full knowledge of the new virus. Again an alleged violation of the regulations with no legal consequences for the responsible states given the absence of sanctioning and enforcing measures. Moreover, some additional measures were noted by the Director General having the medium term proved to be adequate to the exceptional violence of COVID-19 and consistent with the new scientific evidence concerning the possible existence of asymptomatic cases, false negatives, people remaining positive to swap tests even after 50 days and this was ordinary cases in Italy for example. So what about the consistency of these measures with Article 43 requirements and with the WHO temporary recommendations which in fact reflected the scientific evidence available to months ago. Last point, as I anticipated, some additional public health measures adopted at domestic level have heavily impacted on civil rights and freedoms. Several states have declared a state of emergency and exercised emergency powers to impose restrictions on the population derogating in fact from a number of obligations stemming from human rights treaties to which they are partying. However, not all of them have notified this declaration to the United Nations or the Council of Europe in compliance with the requirements set out in the derogation clauses contained in Article 4 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Italy is a case in point. This has prevented international human rights bodies from scrutinizing the legitimacy of the restrictions imposed according to the necessity and proportionality tests and the Human Rights Committee has just issued a statement in which it urges state to comply with the notification obligation set by Article 4 of the Covenant. But here again, even in case of international scrutiny of the legitimacy under international human rights treaties of these measures, some of them would have passed the proportionality test only in the bigger term following the acquisition of more information on the virus. This poses legal questions concerning the right timing for such an assessment in case of scientific uncertainty and also an evaluation which is more ethical and legal concerning the extent to which human rights guarantees should differ to scientific data or information. In conclusion, COVID-19 pandemic has once again uncovered Pandora's box and revitalized the scholarly discussion on the limits of the IHR to provide a response to multiple legal problems that emerge when serious global health risks threaten not only global health but also democracy and human rights. A further revision of the IHR would be necessary and many people are prompting words and studies on this but we may ask her ourselves, our physical, this is in the short term considering that it took 10 years to complete the review of the 1969 regulations from 1995 to 2005 entered into force in 2007. As international lawyers I think we should make an effort to propose solutions aimed at making better use of the existing provisions in order to strengthen the IHR and enhance their effectiveness also borrowing from other branches of international law and thinking about environmental law and the successful experiences reported in these fields in order to be ready to face the next global risk. Thank you so much, I'm finished.