In response to the news that the US state of Missouri is suing China, international law expert Dr Luis Eslava said:
‘Missouri Attorney General, Eric Schmitt has filed a civil lawsuit against three Chinese government ministries, two local governments, two laboratories and the Chinese Communist Party for the country handling of the Covid-19 outbreak.
‘A Republican, and the first authority in the US and internationally to start formal actions against China for the pandemic, Schmitt has stated that China “engaged in misrepresentations, concealment, and retaliation to conceal the gravity and seriousness of the Covid-19 outbreak”.
‘Joining a wave of accusations to China for a pandemic that has infected about 3 million people and taken the lives of almost 200,000 worldwide, Missouri’s lawsuit is symptomatic of a wider and well-documented trend in the use of law as a political tool in the US and around the world.
‘Missouri’s actions against China are being conducted with full knowledge that the doctrine of sovereign immunity protects state officials and representatives of international organisations from prosecution, or at least making any prosecution extremely unlikely.
‘Nations’ responsibility is a key component of the international legal order, yet the system of immunities is also there to enable the functioning of international relations.
‘At the heart of this last episode of blaming China for our current predicament, now using legal means, is a reticence to take a harder road: local leaders accepting political responsibility for decades of undermining public health systems, while building a more socially inclusive and resilient global order. This road is the path to a different future.’
Dr Luis Eslava, Kent Law School, University of Kent
Dr Luis Eslava is Reader in International Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Critical International Law (CeCIL) at Kent Law School. Luis has studied over the recent years the dynamic relation between international law and domestic legal orders; the history of the international development project; and the nature and functioning of the state in the Global South. His current research examines the changing nature of poverty and security policies in the 21st century.
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