“The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented and truly global health emergency. In the last 20 months, it has killed over 1 million humans worldwide and stricken many more, health-wise, psychologically, financially, socially and in many other respects. It has affected the poor South more than the rich North of the earth. It has strained international cooperation within the World Health Organization no less than supranational decision-making in the European Union. It has led to proclamations of states of emergency with derogations from human rights treaty obligations, business shutdowns, university and school closings, lay-offs and short-time work, border closings, quarantines, curfews and numerous other forms of grave human rights interferences…”
This contribution by Prof. Dr. Thomas Giegerich is the kick-off to our Online Symposium “Human Rights during the Pandemic”. During the next weeks this Symposium will cover a wide variety of topics related to human rights issues impacted by the pandemic: From great difficulties the pandemic causes for people with rare diseases to the problem of imbalance of access to vaccines to privacy violations in a brave new digitalized world.
