The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on 2 April calling for intensified international

cooperation to contain, mitigate and defeat the pandemic, including by exchanging information,
scientific knowledge and best practices and by applying the relevant guidelines recommended by
the World Health Organization. In addition, the UN Security Council is yet to deliberate on the
Covid-19 crisis
1. The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of
Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction: This
convention clearly states that the development, production and stockpiling of biological
weapons in any manner against mankind would lead to a violation of the treaty. As per
the treaty, any party can draw an action against the alleged party in UNSC along with the
evidence stated under Article 7.
2. Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other
Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare: This treaty prohibits the use of any
bacteriological method for mass destruction of mankind.

IRAQ
Iraqi non-compliance with the BWC is well documented due to an international process that was
established following the Persian Gulf War in 1991. UN Security Council Resolution 687
signified the conclusion of the war and initiated an important disarmament process. The
resolution required Iraq to declare all of its weapons of mass destruction and ordered their
destruction. The UN Security Council established a special body, UNSCOM, to carry out
inspections of Iraq's chemical, biological, and missile capabilities and to provide for their
destruction. UNSCOM worked from 1991 to 1998, uncovering Iraq's BW program, which dated
back to the early 1970s. It is now known that Iraq's biological weapons program produced
botulinum toxin, anthrax bacteria, aflatoxin, ricin, and wheat cover smut fungus, and initiated a
program on several viral agents. On November 8, 2002 the UN Security Council adopted
resolution 1441 requiring Iraq to grant unrestricted access to UNMOVIC inspectors. Inspections
resumed on November 27. As of this writing, it is quite clear that Iraq has failed to disclose many
details of its biological weapons program to UNMOVIC.

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However, unlike the Pan Am 103 case, the issues involved in Freedom Watch’s petition still
require investigation. Furthermore, the lack of any scientific evidence to support the theory of
using COVID-19 as a bioweapon indicates that these are mere theoretical presumptions and are
not practically possible as COVID-19 is not fatal enough to be used as a bioweapon. Secondly,
the involvement of two nuclear weapons states (NWS) in this case which have been involved in
a trade war appears to be a mere act of predominance. Therefore, alternative discourses may be
necessary to bring China under proper jurisdiction and make them accountable for allegedly
committing such a heinous and negligent act. 

Though the pandemic is a first of its kind, similar scenarios have arisen at the time of other
disasters. Post-disaster work in Odisha has shown that the mental and physical health of children
need equal attention. Relief camps, labour colonies and transit camps at state borders, as well as
quarantine facilities arranged at the block or panchayat level must arrange safe and child-friendly
shelters that provide nutritious food, water and sanitation facilities for families. These spaces
must respond to the psychosocial needs of children and adolescents, specifically those who are
alone as they run the risk of abuse and exploitation.
The migrant vendors have failed terribly in this race of running between police stations and city
corporation offices to secure a pass. Despite the assurance of financial assistance from the
government, the lack of transparency in listing out and licensing street vendors as per the
provisions of the Street Vendors Act 2014, may lead to massive dispossession of vending spaces.
Therefore as to the question, why does any major logistical step by the state become a nightmare
for the workers, the answer is in the nature of a logistical exercise, which will not have the
workers as its main object of attention. Workers are the cogs and wheels, but never the main
object. This had happened to the tea garden workers and other workers in small and medium
units following demonetisation, which devastated them. Within three and half years this
happened again. the transport coolies and vendors of fruits and vegetables were the first to lose
their employment as wholesale and retail market places began to shut down as one of the initial
measures to resist the spread of COVID 19.
On March 29, The Indian Express reported that
the UP government finally started bus services for the stranded workers.
However, the buses started charging exorbitant fees from them i.e. anything
between INR 400 to 1200 which the workers could not afford resulting in

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conflict and clash with bus conductors.
Conclusion
Despite all measures, an impending doom of the Indian economy and
an extremely vulnerable workforce masks the threat of coronavirus. An
alteration in society's perception of migrant workers is not only desirable but
imminent. The lockdown has proven that the blue-collar workers shoulder the
Indian economy. The country's unskilled and semi-skilled labourers form 90
per cent of the workforce. Their job keeps the economy moving and ensures
the smooth running of society. Such a large scale halt of all trades will not
only impact the migrant and daily wage labourers but also the Indian society
as a whole. Even if the latter recovers from this lockdown and coronavirus,
the damage done to the former is irreparable. The way migrant workers'
worries were not taken into consideration before declaring the lockdown and
their subsequent humiliation, hunger and deaths have exposed the extremely
classist nature of the Indian state for the world to witness. It is also helping to formulate a stronger class
consciousness among the toiling masses with the
possibility of the revival of a powerful working-class movement. Nonetheless,
the need of the time is avoiding more death due to lockdown. If proper
measures by the governments, central and state, are not implemented
immediay, then many more will lose their lives to hunger, chaos, and
conflict rather than coronavirus. A bite by Sanjay Sharma, a taxi driver in
Mumbai, originally from Himachal Pradesh, given to Reuters perfectly sums
up the macabre situation faced by the migrant workers in India: “Some people
will die of the virus. The rest of us will die of hunger.”
On a positive note, and despite many parallels, the 1918 influenza and the current coronavirus
pandemic also differ in one fundamental way: in the last one hundred years since the ‘Spanish
Flu’, medical advances have been extraordinary. The COVID-19 pathogen was quickly
identified and sequenced. Thousands of researchers all around the globe are actively working to
better understand its mechanism and characteristics, and to find effective therapies and a vaccine.
Governments can build on a century of progress and experience in public health.
This difference must conjure optimism. Humankind already has and will continue to find new
and effective means to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. However, for all the existing scientific
measures to be effective, they must be put into practice and therefore understood and accepted.
Trust – towards authorities, public health institutions, medical researchers and practitioners – is
once again a key concept in times of crisis.

Therefore rather than building the debate on growing body of war propaganda the enemy was at
the origin of the epidemic, and using it as a weapon; on other hand, involuntarily spreading the
disease because of a failing health system, it is crucial to have a transparent information at all

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times. Mistrust of information from health authorities is still a challenge. Modern means of
communication and the recent development of digital social networks make it even harder.
Undocumented claims, false information, conspiracy theories, and dangerous conclusions can
spread as quickly as viruses.
Nevertheless, as recalled by Daniel Flecknoe, not all lessons have been learned: ‘Wars weaken
the ability of a country to prevent, detect, or fight outbreaks of infectious disease, and leave the
civilian population incredibly vulnerable’. Of course, the outbreak of COVID-19 did not
originate in a country at war; but its impact is disastrous wherever there are armed conflicts or
other situations of violence.
As we know, medical doctors in Wuhan, China, first reported the existence of an unspecified
virus in late December 2019. In almost less than a month China framed its strategy to save its
citizens. On 23 January 2020 China placed the city of Wuhan with 11 million people under
mandatory quarantine along with travel restrictions for other cities in the Hubei province
accounting for a total of 57 million people.
On 11 March a travel ban was put into place by the US administration for travellers from Europe
– those who were not US citizens.
There was no clear policy with respect to others. Spain announced a national quarantine on
March 15, however with many gaps in public health and public mobilisation strategy. The scale,
speed, and the extent of these sovereign measures were globally uneven and showed the uneven
capacity of the states to decide whether to give priority to economy or to life. This unevenness of
state capacity to respond to Covid-19 highlighted a long-term failure of liberal democracies to
sustain public health and life, weakened as they had become due to their commitment to
neoliberal agenda and the demotion of public welfare in favour of privatisation.( cut off from all
human contact)
Since the novel Corona virus outbreak in China in the last month of
2019, enlightened people in the West have been asking, why China? Is it to do
with their food habits, their biological (warfare) experiments, or their lack of
democracy and transparency of the system, or something else? When the
Chinese sought to explain the history of the viruses, and implored the world
to understand their initial unpreparedness, inadequate knowledge, and their
readiness to take help – scientific inputs and medical equipment – and
exchange information with the world, the liberal West was not satisfied. This
was Wuhan virus, Chinese virus, and the mysterious ways of the Chinese
system.
The situation thus looks suspiciously like a world war and post-war scenario.

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Prime Minster said, the battle against the virus was like the great epic war of
the Mahabharata. He said alluding to the declaration of the 21 day nationwide
lockdown, “Mahabharata was won in 18 days, Covid-19 battle will last 21
days”. Again critics pointed out that after the 18 days of the epic war no one
was alive and the victorious few alive had to leave along with their faithful dog
for the mountains to embrace a holy life after death.
Probably, between the two wars, the conventional and against the
epidemic the line of difference is the principle of care. In the former death is
the principle, in the latter it is care for life. In the former the organisation is
for death, in the latter it is life. A war for life is a contradiction of terms. Yet
like other paradoxes, this too is a paradox of our existence. A people’s war
must be an all out effort for care.
by promoting more collective
strategies of care and sharing of responsibilities. In this sense, this war calls
for a new type of public power.
aa
Everywhere the rulers toyed with the idea of a utilitarian calculation
that economically it would be more efficient to let 40,000 to 80,000 people die
rather than to disrupt the economy through massive costly state measures
including lockdowns. However, as soon as the reality of massive deaths
dawned upon the leaders by mid-March, they forgot everything else but the
measure of restricting mobility. The migrant labour became a question mark
in that hour.
farm workers, mostly seasonal and undocumented, were declared “essential”
during the pandemic. Migrant field workers were told to keep working despite
stay-at-home directives, and were given letters of permit. They were critical to
the supply of food chains.

If someone looks into the history of pandemics then they will see that
in most cases explorations, conquest, commerce and migrations have paved
the way for the development of networks that resulted in the spread of
pandemics in different parts of the world. People who followed these
networks such as explorers, colonial entrepreneurs such as those who built
plantations and colonial settlement, army troops, travelers, overseas migrants
etc. became carriers of most disastrous epidemics. The aggressive growth of
colonialism and capitalism in one sense played productive role in outbreaks of
epidemics in human society.
By one estimate, some 17 million Indians were living outside the
country in 2017 and around 391,000 went abroad as unskilled migrants.
According to the 2001 census, 259 million people migrated from one state to
another and from village to village.

7.2. RECOMMENDATIONS

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I would like to advance and reiterate three well-known recommendations: First, there should be a
radical redistribution of India’s 60 million tons of surplus food grains. This is a demand put forth
by P. Sainath. Second, as an immediate short-term measure during the lockdown, street vendors
should be permitted to source essential commodities from local primary producers and artisans
and retail the commodities to end-users. This is the time for the revival of local and self-
sufficient production and consumption networks as a more viable alternative to the massive
supply chains. Third, this is the high-time for the implementation of the universal basic income.
This measure will recover the purchasing power of the poor, which will eventually boost up
demand. This measure should be accompanied by universal healthcare and education under the
government.
What if any states were to take China to the ICJ? First, international legal disputes are
adjudicated based on states consent to the forum. Even if the ICJ is agreed upon, in the public
interest, it might take up the matter under Article 36 (2) which pertains to compulsory
jurisdiction on the breach of an international obligation. However, this is rarely ever resorted to.
Secondly, China enjoys sovereign immunity and jurisdictional immunity from their acts from
being sued—a premise that is fundamental to the enforcement of international law and
aptly declared so in the International Law Commission’s Articles on State Responsibility. This is
evidenced by ICJ in the 2012 Jurisdictional Immunities case, wherein the court affirmed that
national courts are required to determine whether a foreign State is entitled to immunity as a
matter of international law before it can hear the merits of the case brought before it and before
the facts have been established. Therefore, this immunity may not be absolute, but it is still a first
recognised right nonetheless at all forums. 
The revolution in biosciences and biotechnology poses a serious challenge to the BWC. The
advances have been both horizontal and vertical: an increasing number of countries have access
to biotechnology and want to benefit from the opportunities in these areas. Furthermore, the pace
of advances in biosciences and biotechnology continues to quicken, creating possibilities that
were unimaginable just a few years ago. However, with these developments also come the risk of
the misuse of biological agents, materials, technology, and knowledge for hostile purposes.
Recognizing these potential problems, BWC State Parties have made clear during the First and
Second Review Conferences that genetically engineered microorganisms are covered under the
provisions of Article 1.

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These attacks served as dramatic illustrations of how destructive biological weapons can be, even
on a small scale. Throughout the 1990s, States Parties worked to strengthen the Convention, first
through VEREX and then negotiation of a legally-binding Protocol. States Parties stood at a
crossroads. They all agreed that the BWC sets an important international prohibition and that it
needed to be reinforced. However, they differed in the ways they wanted to achieve a
strengthened BWC. The agreement that was reached at the second session of the Fifth Review
Conference in November 2002 is a modest one. It also signals a shift away from the
comprehensive legally-binding approach of the Ad Hoc Group towards a more gradual, subject-
specific approach that will be comprised of a combination of national and international measures.
The urgent question is whether this shift in approaches will enable States Parties to better address
the remaining threat posed by biological weapons.

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