In 2020, the world faced a new pandemic. The corona infection hit an unprepared world, and there were no medicines and no vaccines against it. Research to develop vaccines started immediately and in a remarkably short time several vaccines became available. However, despite initiatives for global equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, vaccines have so far become accessible only to a minor part of the world population. In this article, I discuss the global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines from an ethical point of view. I reflect on what ethical principles should guide the global distribution of vaccines and what global justice and international solidarity imply for vaccine distribution and I analyse the reasons for states to prioritize their own citizens. My focus is on ethical reasons for and against ‘vaccine nationalism’ and ‘vaccine cosmopolitanism.’ My point of departure is the appeal for international solidarity from several world leaders, arguing that ‘Where you live should not determine whether you live’. I discuss the COVAX initiative to enable a global vaccination and the proposal from India and South Africa to the World Trade Organization to temporarily waive patent rights for vaccines. In the final section, I argue for global vaccine sufficientarianism, which is a modified version of vaccine cosmopolitanism. 

The increased efforts of democratic states to enforce immigration control and deportations have sparked heated public debates about the rights of non-citizen children to be granted asylum. Local communities, anti-deportation movements, and children themselves have rejected the justifications provided by state authorities and have mobilized claims in the public sphere for the rights of non-citizen children to stay. To date, scholars have primarily analyzed normative issues about the rights of non-citizen children with departure in legal positive rights as enshrined in domestic and international law; however, scholars have paid less attention to political theoretical aspects of the issue. This article takes its point of departure from claims for non-citizen children’s right to stay as formulated in the public sphere and uses discourse ethics to theorize in what ways these claims challenge state power and contemporary laws on asylum. In addition, this article contributes to the scholarly debates about the pressing global political issue of child migration and the political theory of human rights for children. Building on Seyla Benhabib’s concepts reciprocity and democratic iterations, this article develops a discourse theoretical approach that offers an alternative framework to a legalistic approach for the normative analysis of the rights of non-citizen children.