Human Rights and Structural Inequality in the Shadow of COVID-19—A New Chapter in the Culture Wars?

Abstract

One aspect of human rights law’s much vaunted (and critiqued) hegemony is that there are few areas of public endeavour that cannot be viewed through the lens of their rights-related ramifications. It is therefore unsurprising to find that from the first murmurings of measures designed to stem the spread and impact of COVID-19, human rights lawyers had something substantive to say, casting dire predictions should governments not act in concert with basic rights obligations, and providing guidance for how to tackle the pandemic consistent with the principles of humanity and equality ostensibly underpinning the discipline. Show more