In the face of escalating health crises and enduring global health inequities, the call to decolonize global health has grown stronger, prompting critical reflections on how global health laws contribute to disparities in the Global South. Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum's Capabilities Approach offers a normative framework for assessing how social and institutional structures impact individual well-being. By centering the end goal of human well-being, the approach provides an alternative to resource-based theories of social justice. It enables a critical evaluation of institutions, legal regimes, processes, and norms within international law, and their implications for achieving global health justice. 

Dr. Sridhar Venkatapuram will speak about his seminal work on health capabilities, emphasizing their centrality to advancing decolonized global health justice. His presentation will explore how a capabilities-based approach can confront the deep-rooted inequalities perpetuated by global health systems. Ms. Pramiti Parwani will introduce a framework of state capabilities, extending the Capabilities Approach beyond the individual to the level of nation-states. By applying this model to vaccine access, she shifts the analysis from traditional human rights law to focus on how international actors, such as global institutions and legal regimes, influence states' capabilities to secure vaccines for their populations. 

Together, these perspectives invite us to rethink what justice in global health truly means and how we can build more inclusive, capability-focused systems that empower both individuals and states. 

The talk will be followed by a Q&A session. Dr. Kanad Bagchi from the Amsterdam Centre for International Law (ACIL) will moderate this session.