JURIST – Academic Commentary, March 31, 2020.
Highly infectious diseases like COVID-19 typically do not respect borders or passports. They do not distinguish between nationality, race, ethnicity, gender or other categories. They pose transnational challenges that require cooperation and action through law. The COVID-19 pandemic emphasizes why it is necessary to question the extant frameworks for responsibility for epidemic and pandemic diseases. Key considerations include how responsibility should be distributed amongst actors and which actors should be held responsible. A thorough analysis of the actors responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic would require that we be substantially on the other side of the curve. Accordingly, this post focuses on the issues implicated in trying to address the former. This post also begins to consider what responsibility should look like for epidemic and pandemic diseases. This post demonstrates that reimagination of responsibility is required more generally and especially as applied to epidemic and pandemic diseases. It also indicates that more substantial international legal and institutional reform is necessary to provide full redress for violations witnessed with epidemic and pandemic diseases.