Published Paper Details:

This article analyses the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its securitising effect on health and human rights globally. It asks whether measures taken to control the pandemic comply with the emergency provisions and limitations allowed under human rights treaties, and whether they will lead to more permanent securitisation of the health sector. To mitigate the spread of COVID-19, governments throughout the world have introduced emergency measures that constrain individual freedoms, social and economic rights and global solidarity. These regulatory measures have closed schools, workplaces and transit systems, cancelled public gatherings, introduced mandatory home confinement and deployed large-scale electronic surveillance. In doing so, human rights obligations are rarely addressed, despite how significantly they are impacted by the pandemic response. The norms and principles of human rights should guide government responses to COVID-19, with these rights strengthening the public health response to COVID-19.