Refugees and the Scope for Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination, Vol. 54

Vaccination programs are regularly celebrated as one of the most successful and cost-effective public health interventions ever developed. Yet, in a global context characterized by an acute lack of vaccines coupled with unfair distribution, COVID-19 vaccination schemes are controversial. Inaccurate and misleading stories about the vaccines risk becoming a “second pandemic.” However, long before COVID-19, growing vaccine hesitancy and skepticism were affecting the uptake for vaccination schemes in humanitarian contexts and considered a serious threat to global health. . . .

Kristin Bergtora Sandvik is a professor of legal sociology at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo and a Research Professor in Humanitarian Studies at Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). Her research focuses on the development of a political and legal sociology of humanitarianism. She teaches sociology of law, legal anthropology, legal technology and artificial intelligence and robot regulations. In 2011, Sandvik cofounded the Norwegian Center for Humanitarian Studies (NCHS), where she was the director from 2012 to 2016. Sandvik graduated from the University of Oslo with a Masters in Women’s Law in 2002. She obtained an LL.M (waived) from Harvard Law School in 2003, and a doctorate in Juridical Sciences (S.J.D) from Harvard Law School in 2008. Sandvik has also studied social anthropology at the University of Oslo, and she has been a guest researcher at the Oxford Refugee Studies Centre and the Refugee Law Project (Uganda).