Topic 1

Introduction

As the coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic sweeps across the globe, executive branches of governments have been exercising public health emergency powers.[1] While many of the extraordinary measures taken under the emergency power are essential to the containment of the virus, such power is subject to potential misuse. This Insight examines the human rights implications of exercising public health emergency powers in the particular context of asylum seekers waiting at a border.

On July 16, 2018, the Islamic Republic of Iran (Iran) filed an Application instituting proceedings against the United States (the U.S.) before the International Court of Justice (the Court) regarding Alleged Violations of the 1955 Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights.[1] The application concerned alleged breaches of the Treaty of Amity arising from the re-imposition of certain sanctions by the U.S.

Cyberspace is so omnipresent that it can seem banal, but it is also a target-rich environment from a military perspective, with modern armies deeply reliant on digital infrastructure. From the perspective of international humanitarian law (or IHL, also known as the law of armed conflict), this raises the question of what cyber operators may and may not attack during armed conflicts, what even constitutes an "attack" under IHL in cyberspace, and what the reverberating effects of those attacks could be on civilians.

In 1964, the United States Congress passed a law providing that a United States district court "'may order' a person residing or found in the district to give testimony or produce documents 'for use in a proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal . . .

Since 2015, Brazil has concluded more than a dozen Cooperation and Facilitation Investment Agreements (CFIAs), in a radical departure from Brazil's earlier policy to remain out of the network of investment treaties.[1] These CFIAs include a novel system, encompassing mechanisms for preventing and settling disputes, which differs strikingly from traditional investor-state arbitration available under most bilateral investment treaties.

Preventing or managing a global pandemic such as COVID-19 requires states to strictly comply with the World Health Organization's International Health Regulations 2005 (IHRs). However, like many multilateral environment agreements, the IHRs lack a strong dispute resolution mechanism to enhance state compliance. To bridge that gap, states have incorporated several environmental conventions into free trade agreements (FTAs) over the past fifteen years.

After the first cases of what would later be named "COVID-19" were notified by China on December 31, 2019, the European Union (EU) reported its three first detected cases on January 24, 2020. As of April 18, 785,229 detected cases and 78,576 deaths had been reported by the 27 EU member states, while the total number of detected cases and deaths reported worldwide were 2,197,593 and 153,090 respectively.

As of April 18, 2020, Covid-19, designated as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), infected more than 2 million persons.[1] This dramatic increase in the number of cases since the first reported case on December 31, 2019, sparked a range of responses from various public and private actors.

Over time, natural calamities and armed conflicts have demonstrated that human rights are often the first casualties of a crisis.