Trending News

Global Pandemics and International Law: An Evaluation of State Responsibility and States’ Human Rights Obligations arising from COVID-19

Source: Christopher Yaw Nyinevi

Global Pandemics and International Law: An Evaluation of State Responsibility and States’ Human Rights Obligations arising from COVID-19
MarryRight Ghana

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, its damaging impacts and the corresponding measures that states have implemented implicate two important questions: (a) whether or to what extent a state bears responsibility under international law for its complicity in the outbreak of a pandemic; and (b) whether any human rights obligations or liabilities arise for states relative to the measures they enact to combat a pandemic. This paper addresses these two questions. The discussions on international responsibility are situated within the context of the Articles on State Responsibility, the Law of the World Health Organization and other rules of general international law. And drawing from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, the second part of the paper focuses on the human rights obligations of states arising from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted life in a way that most people would have thought unimaginable a few months back. International travel has grounded to a halt, major global sporting and entertainment events have been cancelled or postponed, and most importantly, untold deaths and suffering have become the order of the day in a lot of countries around the world. To contain the pandemic and respond to its socioeconomic impacts, many states have enacted various measures. Emergency laws restricting movement of persons and public gatherings have been imposed, borders have been closed to international travel and immigration, and stiffer regulations on trade in medical supplies and other essential goods have also been enacted by some states.

Pandemics are not new in human history, however. While they tend to be once-in-a-lifetime events, the world has seen several of them. The Plague of Justinian which occurred in 6th century (AD) is believed to have killed about 50 million people, probably half of the world’s population at the time. There was also the Bubonic Plagues of the 14th century that was likely caused by the same pathogen as the Justinian plague. Popularly known as ‘the Black Death’, it is estimated to have killed about 200 million people. The 20th century brought with it two major pandemics. The Influenza (commonly known as the ‘Spanish Flu’) broke out in 1918 and killed about 50 to 100 million people, numbers that outstrip casualties of the First World War which began the same year. The HIV/AIDS pandemic emerged towards the end of the century and still has no vaccine. The UN estimates that as of 2019, approximately 76 million people have been infected with HIV and about 33 million of that number have died of AIDS. Throughout history, pandemics and other infectious disease outbreaks have had
major impacts on various aspects of life, including politics and international relations. For instance, in the aftermath of the Black Death, Italian city states began the practice of issuing health certificates to diplomats and traders who travelled
across borders. These health cards have been regarded as the precursor to the modern passport and other government-issued documents for international travel.

Worth mentioning is also the International Sanitary Convention (ISC), the antecedent to the current International Health Regulations of the World Health Organisation (WHO) which has become prominent in the discussions on COVID-
19. First adopted in 1892 to provide quarantine measures for cholera and later revised to include plague and yellow fever, the ISC was the product of a ‘series of Sanitary Conferences beginning in 1851 to forge an international agreement to curb
the spread of infectious diseases’ from Asia into Europe.

Read the full article below.


Read the full article