Can we rely on the Security Council for health emergencies?

In passing resolutions on HIV/AIDS, Ebola and COVID-19, the Security Council has shown at least a passing interest in health, and calls have been made to give it a more central role in global disease response. In this contribution, reflecting on two decades of the UNSC’s engagement with health emergencies, I suggest we should be cautious about making the Security Council too central to pandemic response. I focus on three problems with the Council: that it is highly politicised and deeply divided in ways that mean it cannot be relied on to act when needed most; that when it does act it tends to do so too late, once an emerging problem has already become a global crisis; and that it does not in any case necessarily have the tools at its disposal to make a meaningful contribution. Instead, I argue, it is precisely its role as a ‘health outsider’ that enables the UNSC to occasionally make a contribution. It would be risky indeed to hand such a body real responsibility for crisis response. That is a task much more likely to be performed assiduously (if often imperfectly) by a body such as the WHO.