The international order is under pressure precisely when it is most needed. States are turning inward, driven by the resurgence of nationalism and populist skepticism toward multilateral institutions, but the world they inhabit remains structurally globalized, so these inward turns have profound consequences. Each year, 1.5 billion international tourist arrivals are recorded. An endemic pathogen in a remote Patagonian valley is, at most, a long-haul flight away from Madrid, London, or Tokyo. The spring of 2026 demonstrated this with painful precision.
When a Dutch couple on a birdwatching expedition through Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay boarded the MV Hondius cruise ship in Ushuaia on April 1, they unknowingly carried the Andes virus, the only known strain of hantavirus transmitted between humans. Three people died before the ship docked in Tenerife for medical evacuations.
What triggered the international response was not diplomatic courtesy, but the law. In its landmark 1949 Corfu Channel judgment, the International Court of Justice held that states are bound by “elementary considerations of humanity” under customary international law, irrespective of any specific treaty obligations. This means that a ship carrying people in danger of death creates obligations for any state capable of acting, regardless of its flag, the nationality of those on board, or the domestic political cost of providing assistance. These obligations are further reinforced by the right to life enshrined in Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which imposes positive duties on states capable of preventing the foreseeable loss of human life.
However, translating these obligations into an operational response requires an institutional infrastructure. This is where the WHO becomes indispensable. Operating primarily through the International Health Regulations (IHR), it regulates and legally obligates the 197 States Parties to detect, assess, report, and respond to public health risks and emergencies of international concern, including pandemics, creating a surveillance architecture that relies on the reciprocal exchange of information. When major contributors withdraw, two consequences ensue.
First, there is a financial aspect: the withdrawal of the United States, historically the largest single donor, has created funding shortfalls that disproportionately affect surveillance precisely in the environments where new pathogens most frequently emerge. Second, there is an erosion of legal accountability. IHR compliance mechanisms only function within a political ecology of shared commitment. As major states imply that the framework is optional, others see their incentives to report transparently diminished. The result is not merely a moral hazard; it is a structural degradation of the early warning system upon which the entire edifice rests.
When the Hondius became stranded off Cape Verde, the WHO and the EU formally requested that Spain manage the evacuation. This hantavirus outbreak directly illustrates the application of the IHR’s core capacities at points of entry, particularly in managing an international public health emergency involving cross-border travel. The Spanish Ministry of Health approved the ship’s docking in Tenerife, explicitly invoking international law and humanitarian principles. The regional president of the Canary Islands immediately declared that he “could not allow” the ship’s entry—a politically understandable but legally untenable stance.
The duty to provide assistance, codified in Article 98 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), is a norm of customary international law that does not admit any unilateral derogation by a national or regional authority, precisely because the alternative—a world in which states might weigh the political cost of rescue against the lives at stake—is something that international law has explicitly rejected. The central government’s override of the regional authority was therefore not merely politically defensible but a legal obligation.
The operation, carried out on May 10, in which passengers of 19 nationalities were screened and dispersed on military aircraft to their respective countries, functioned thanks to the WHO’s coordination infrastructure. Seventeen US citizens were evacuated to Nebraska, directly benefiting from a system that their own government was simultaneously defunding.
The Hondius case highlights a broader and largely unresolved problem: international law regulates the sea through a patchwork of instruments that remain insufficient for the crises it routinely faces. Article 98 of UNCLOS and Chapter V of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) impose on all ship masters, and coastal States with the appropriate capacity, the obligation to provide assistance to persons in distress at sea, regardless of their nationality or legal status.
However, that same framework clearly fails in other contexts.
Migrants crossing the Mediterranean have, by law, exactly the same right to rescue as the passengers of the Hondius, but rescue resources have been withdrawn, NGO vessels have been detained for fulfilling their legal duty, and informal returns to Libya continue, in open defiance of the principle of non-refoulement. The law is identical; its application is not. What differs is not the legal text, but the political will to enforce it and the visibility of those in danger.
Another population is faring even worse. Thousands of merchant seafarers and crew members from the Philippines, India, and Egypt remain stranded aboard ships in the Persian Gulf, unable to rotate or be repatriated as a result of the regional conflict. The 2006 Maritime Labour Convention imposes clear obligations on flag and port states regarding welfare and repatriation, but it was designed for commercial failure, not geopolitical paralysis. For these workers, no instrument offers adequate protection precisely when they need it most.
The Hondius incident, along with the plight of migrants in the Mediterranean and seafarers stranded in the Gulf, reveals a single underlying truth: the international legal framework is sophisticated enough to articulate obligations rooted in the principle of humanity, yet fragile enough to collapse when political will is withdrawn. The WHO needs reform, but reform is not synonymous with withdrawal. The sea has always been the arena where the gap between legal aspiration and political reality is most evident. Closing that gap does not require less multilateralism, but rather the courage to demand more from it.
Carlos Batallas is a professor of International Law at IE University. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author.
