Whose rules-based order? Lessons from the health justice movement for a broken multilateralism
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
- Venue
- SOAS (in-person only)
- Room
- Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre
- Event type
- Lecture
About this event
SOAS Development Leadership Dialogue presents the Annual Lecture 2026.
Please note that this event is in-person only at the Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre, SOAS.
Global economic rules are driving inequality on a remarkable scale – most starkly in medical science, where a minority can access cutting-edge medicines while much of the majority world cannot. The international institutions mandated to address this inequality have repeatedly clashed with global economic rules that embed it.
The AIDS movement built an extraordinary model for access to medicines, combining pressure from social movements with law and policy action by majority-world governments, and a rights-based approach that has saved tens of millions of lives. Yet during COVID-19, that approach was abandoned, multilateralism failed to find an equitable solution, and global economic rules protected monopolies over lives.
Today, amid a rupture in global geopolitics, there is an opportunity to fundamentally change the systems driving inequality. Indeed, there are nascent attempts to redress the structural barriers to health equity in the global economy. Some, like the Pandemic Agreement, have come against the same power imbalances. But national and regional actors are stepping up, finding new forms of cooperation, and capitalising on disruption to chart a new path .
Drawing on the history of the AIDS movement and the wider struggle for global justice, Winnie Byanyima will outline how the majority world can seize this moment to upend the global imbalances that hold back health and development.
Speaker
- Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS
About the speaker
Winnie Byanyima is the Executive Director of UNAIDS and an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. A passionate and longstanding champion for social justice and a global leader on inequality, Ms Byanyima leads the United Nations’ efforts to end the AIDS pandemic by 2030. Ms Byanyima believes that health care is a human right, and she is the co-founder and co-chair of the People’s Medicines Alliance, advocating for equitable access to medical technologies that help to prevent and respond to current and future pandemics.
Before joining UNAIDS, Ms Byanyima served as the Executive Director of Oxfam International. Previously, Ms Byanyima was elected for three terms in the parliament of her country, Uganda, where she led the first parliamentary women’s caucus, championing ground-breaking gender equality provisions in the county’s 1995 post-conflict constitution.
Ms Byanyima led the establishment of the African Union Commission’s Directorate of Gender and Development and served as Director of Gender and Development at the United Nations Development Programme. She founded the Forum for Women in Democracy, a Ugandan nongovernmental organization, and has been deeply involved in building global coalitions on social and economic justice.
Ms Byanyima has co-chaired the World Economic Forum and served on Prime Minister Trudeau’s Gender Advisory Council during Canada’s G7 Presidency. She has also served on the Global Commission on Climate Adaptation, the International Labour Organization’s Global Commission on the Future of Work and the World Bank’s Advisory Council on Gender and Development. In 2025, Ms Byanyima served on President Ramaphosa’s G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Wealth Inequality.
She holds a master of science degree in mechanical engineering from Cranfield University and a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Manchester. Ms Byanyima is the recipient of numerous global and national awards, including the 2023 Hall of Femme Award bestowed by IWFSA (International Women’s Forum South Africa). She has been awarded 4 honorary doctorates from the universities of Manchester (UK), Mount Saint Vincent’s (Canada), Cranfield (UK), and Free State (South Africa).
Header image credit: James Wiseman via Unsplash.
Please note that this event is in-person only at the Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre, SOAS. A recording of the event will later be published on SOAS DLD's YouTube channel.
