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Abstract

The regulation of territorial borders was a close companion to the COVID-19 pandemic response. An unprecedented level of global restrictions on international travel and trade took place. The World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations of 2005 enshrine broad legal criteria for restrictions on the entry of persons and goods in the territory of countries during disease outbreaks. Nevertheless, these two areas are further regulated by separate fields of international law. This leads to a normative duality, wherein international rules on the cross-border movement of goods—with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) of 1947 and the World Trade Organization at the core—are more sophisticated in comparison to rules on the international mobility of persons (centred on the United Nations International Organization on Migration and “soft law” documents). Thus, justifying restrictions on trade demands a more vexing onus than those on the cross-border travel of persons. Against this backdrop, the current contribution critically assesses this normative duality with a focus on vaccine passports and their legal consequences for the international mobility of persons.