By Rossella De Falco
Strong, well-coordinated and resilient public health care services play a vital role in preventing and responding to public health crises. Under international human rights law, States have a positive, primary obligation to ensure that such health care services are of the highest possible quality and accessible to everyone, everywhere, and without discrimination.
By Calvin Wai-Loon Ho
With the mainstreaming of digital technology across many spheres of social life, infodemic management must be an integral part of public health emergency prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery.
While the Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Public Health Emergencies (the Principles) do not make explicit reference to infodemics, the application of digital technologies in response to a public health emergency is a clear concern. This article provides further elaboration and critique of the Principles and their treatment of this emergent phenomenon.
By Kayum Ahmed, Julia Bleckner, and Kyle Knight
In mid-May, the World Health Organization officially declared the “emergency” phase of the COVID-19 pandemic over. However, the deep wounds of the pandemic remain, compelling those concerned about this pandemic and future health emergencies to account for catastrophic failures by those in power. These reflections suggest that the public health crisis could have been addressed differently, both reducing COVID-19’s unprecedented magnitude of illness and death, and preserving human dignity.
The COVID-19 pandemic isn’t over, and the end of this pandemic’s emergency phase certainly doesn’t mean we accept the widely abysmal response as the model for the world’s reaction to the next one. Public health emergencies aren’t entirely preventable. We live in a complex world where health is increasingly affected by a changing climate, extraordinary levels of pollution, and inadequate preventive and responsive health services. Emergencies will happen. But when they do, responses that uphold human rights need to be the norm.
By Roojin Habibi, Timothy Fish Hodgson, and Alicia Ely Yamin
Today, as the world transitions from living in the grips of a novel coronavirus to living with an entrenched, widespread infectious disease known as COVID-19, global appreciation for the human rights implications of public health crises are once again rapidly fading from view.
Against the backdrop of this burgeoning collective amnesia, a project to articulate the human rights norms relevant to public health emergencies led to the development of the 2023 Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Public Health Emergencies (the Principles).
This symposium gathers reflections from leading scholars, activists, jurists, and others from around the world with respect to the recently issued Principles.