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10 AsianJLS 1 (2023)

handle is hein.journals/ajulsoc10 and id is 1 raw text is: Asian Journal of Law and Society (2023), 10, 1-10 CAMBRIDGE doi:10.1017/als.2022.16 UNIVERSflY PRESS RESEARCH ARTICLE The COVID-I9 crisis, Herd immunity, and Vacc ne Apartheid in thc Ag-' of Antlropoccnc Hiroshi Fukurai*, Robin Gabriel and Xiaochen Liang University of California, Santa Cruz, USA *Corresponding author. E-mail: hfukurai@ucsc.edu Abstract The coronavirus pandemic has led to millions of deaths around the world. In many countries, it has also exposed long-standing inequities and injustices in health care, income distribution, labour mar- ket practice, and social protection for the poor, women, indigenous peoples, and other marginalized segments of the population. The disproportionate casualties among vulnerable populations have also exposed predatory corporate practices, such as the refusal to share vaccine patents with low-income countries (LIC) in the Global South. World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned that this vaccine apartheid could lead to the further spread of more dangerous forms of virus variants, and that global solidarity and collaboration may be the only viable approach to current and future pandemics.' Scientists have long warned that the continued destruction of the environment and ecological diversity would lead to future waves of cross-species (zoonotic) viral pandemics, due to the elimination of natural borders that once existed between human and non-human species. In the last several decades alone, humanity has suffered from five major zoonotic pandemics: AIDS, SARS, MARS, Ebola, and COVID-19.2 This Special Issue focuses on a select group of Asian countries in order to critically examine the impact of socio-legal inequities in state-centric policies upon domestic populations, including indigenous peoples, and to explore the possibility of international collaborative strategies for controlling the spread of deadly viruses and their variants in the coming years and decades, in Asia and beyond. Keywords: COVID-19; World Health Organization (WHO); vaccine apartheid; indigenous peoples; Cuba; vaccine untouchables; vaccine genocide I. Introduction In May 2021, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared that humanity had entered a stage of vaccine apartheid, in which the inequitable production of vaccines and their disproportionate distribution could lead to the unnecessary deaths of millions of people.3 The Global Union Federation (GUF), an international federation of trade unions, urged an end to this vaccine apartheid that continues to kill indigenous peoples and vulnerable populations throughout the world.4 The UN Special Rapporteur for Indigenous Peoples, Jose Francisco Cali Tzay, warned that indigenous people and other vulnerable populations have been hit hardest by the pan- demic and were most likely to suffer due to inadequate access to vaccines in years to come. 1 world Health organization (2020). 2 Nebehay & Shields (2020). 3 shields & Farge (2021). n Global Union Federations in Asia Pacific Urge to End the Vaccine Apartheid (2021). © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Asian Journal of Law and Society