JUSTICE - No. 65

15 Fall 2020 Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020 is an example of a global crisis that requires international cooperation and coordinated global efforts. The scientific community understood this from the outset. Scientists embarked on an unprecedented level of global collaboration in an effort to find a vaccine for the virus. While political leaders have closed their borders, scientists have opened up theirs, rushing to share their findings with colleagues from other countries. 10 Cross- border consortiums are springing up, where laboratories in different countries, different universities and various research centers collaborate in identifying viral genome sequences and share results of clinical experiments. Scientists have put aside the usual competitive quest for academic credit and postponed the work on publication of journal articles so that all efforts can be devoted to the common goal of finding a cure as quickly as possible. 11 Moreover, teams of scholars from a range of disciplines, such as statistics, law, psychology, rational decision making, economics and medicine are joining forces in suggesting optimal strategies to deal with the pandemic, while balancing the necessary measures against the needs of the economy. In addition to cooperation in the search for a vaccine and in designing optimal measures to cope with the crisis, I believe that global cooperation in designing measures that will prevent future pandemics, or at least to reduce the risk of their outbreak, is also needed. The aftermath of a mega-crisis is often a good time to initiate international conventions aimed at preventing the recurrence of such a crisis and of strengthening global collaboration in achieving this goal. Hence, the aftermath of World War II and the Shoah led to the realization that the international community must denounce and take collaborative action against crimes against humanity. This, in turn, led to the Nuremberg war trials (1945-46) and to the Genocide Convention (1948), 12 and also contributed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). 13 The Nuremberg trials also served as the model for trials against war crimes committed in the Far East 14 and for present-day international courts in charge of trying crimes committed during the Balkan wars 15 and the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s. 16 It is precisely these aforementioned traumatic events that advanced the development of international criminal law. We need to look into the circumstances that led to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and see what might be done to prevent such pandemics in the future. We recall that the outbreak was first identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Most of the people who reported being infected that month had visited the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a live animal and seafood market in the city of Hubei, Wuhan. According to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 33 out of 585 environmental samples obtained from the market indicated evidence of COVID-19. 17 The Huanan Seafood Market is known for selling exotic game and other wild animals, a practice that is not uncommon in many other wet markets in China. According to the South China Morning Pos t , the market had a section selling around 120 wildlife animals 10. Matt Apuzzo and David D. Kirkpatrick, “Covid-19 Changed How the World Does Science, Together,”N.Y. T IMES , April 1, 2020, Revised April 14, 2020, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/world/europe/ coronavirus-science-research-cooperation.html 11. One global effort is the GISAID Initiative, which promotes the rapid sharing of data from all influenza viruses and the coronavirus causing COVID-19.This includes genetic sequence and related clinical and epidemiological data associated with human viruses, and geographical as well as species-specific data associated with avian and other animal viruses, to help researchers understand how viruses evolve and spread during epidemics and pandemics. For more information see the GISAID website, available at www.gisaid.org 12. UNGA, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 9 December 1948, U.N.T.S., vol. 78, p. 277. 13. UNGA, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10 December 1948, 217 A (III). 14. I refer here mainly to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also known as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, convened on April 29, 1946, to try military and political leaders of Japan for war crimes and crimes against humanity. 15. UNSC, S.C. Res. 827 (1993) [International Criminal Tribunal for the formerYugoslavia (ICTY)], 25 May 1993, S/RES/827 (1993). The tribunal was situated and acted in The Hague until its dissolution in 2017. 16. UNSC, S.C. Res. 955 (1994) [Establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda], 8 November 1994, S/RES/955 (1994). The tribunal was situated and acted in Arusha, Tanzania, until its dissolution in 2015. 17. Jeremy Page,“Virus Sparks Soul-Searching Over China's Wild Animal Trade,”W ALL S TREET J., Jan. 27, 2020, available at https://www.wsj.com/articles/virus-sparks-soul- searching-over-chinas-wild-animal-trade-11580055290