EJIL: The Podcast!

With cyberattacks against the health care sector on the rise, this episode focuses on international law and cyber operations, especially in the context of the fight against COVID-19. For this discussion, Dapo Akande, Marko Milanovic, & Sarah Nouwen are joined by Harriet Moynihan (Chatham House), and Tilman Rodenhäuser (International Committee of the Red Cross). They consider whether international law imposes obligations on states to refrain from such attacks having effect in other states. They also examine the obligations, under international human rights law and other bodies of law, to take positive action to prevent such attacks by non-state actors.

Dapo Akande, Marko Milanovic, Sarah Nouwen and Philippa Webb are joined by Gian Luca Burci, former Legal Counsel of the World Health Organization, to discuss international health law and pandemics. They discuss the obligations arising under the WHO's International Health Regulations, as well as various attempts to hold states and organizations (China, the US, the WHO) accountable in a variety of domestic and international courts.Moving from the virus to immunity, the final segment discusses a recent English case that raises a difficult tension between the obligations to protect human rights and to accord diplomatic immunity. 

Dapo Akande, Marko Milanovic, Sarah Nouwen and Philippa Webb discuss the compatibility with international human rights law of the measures taken by states in the fight against the corona virus. Do states have a duty to cooperate in tackling the virus? Should they derogate from rights provided for in human rights treaties or are those rights flexible enough to permit the measures being taken? What measures can be taken to combat misinformation relating to the virus? They end with one of the international law issues of the day not receiving attention because of the virus - the indictment by the United States of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.