The United Nations Security Council and health emergencies: introduction

Since 2000, health issues have increasingly been discussed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) without consensus being built on how and when address topics, or its role in global governance. As contributions this issue show, high-profile infectious disease outbreaks as well disruption of healthcare delivery assistance conflict settings driven agenda UNSC debates, but that has remained ad hoc. Health topics seem most likely to be put P5 perceive a particular threat international peace security, social economic consequences crisis potentially destabilise countries regions. That raises another political question, however: under what circumstances are they those terms, whose interests prioritised such determination?