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

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, its damaging impacts and the corresponding measures that states have enacted 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 state 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 ICCPR and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, the second part of the discussions focus on the human rights obligations of states arising from the Covid-19 pandemic.