Lessons for Implementing Human Rights from COVID-19

Book excerpt: This book explores the effect of the pandemic on human rights; civil and political rights (CPR); economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR); and freedoms around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic radically changed many aspects of the lives of individuals and entire societies. This crisis and the unprecedented experience required extraordinary solutions, regulations, and rapid responses from decision-makers to limit the spread of the disease and protect societies. To this end, during this period, many countries chose to impose states of emergency, resulting in the granting of extraordinary powers to the executive. This has sometimes been a very convenient pretext for introducing various types of restrictions, oppressive surveillance, and other legal arrangements that can be qualified as human rights violations. The authors make a scholarly summary of this period, identifying possible rights violations — but above all — recommendations for the future. This crisis has shown how important it is to have universal, equitable health and social protection systems that cover all community members equally and without discrimination, and the authors remodel the concept of "human rights" and "human needs". The book covers varied examples from lockdowns to vaccination to information control, across Spain, Poland, South Africa and Uganda, the Czech Republic, Belarus and Ukraine, and Russia. This book will appeal to higher-level students and scholars of law, political science, and international relations and will also be helpful for public policymakers at national and international levels.