Apr 6, 2020 | News
ICJ has joined other NGOs in welcoming steps taken by Indian authorities to decongest prisons in an effort to contain the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). The Government should release all unjustly detained prisoners as a matter of priority.
The joint statement read as follows:
The fate of hundreds of arbitrarily detained Kashmiri prisoners hangs in the balance as the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in India passes the 4,000 mark and many more are likely to remain undetected or unreported.
Inmates and prison staff, who live in confined spaces and in close proximity with others, remain extremely vulnerable to COVID-19. While the rest of the country is instructed to respect social isolation and hygiene rules, basic measures like hand washing – let alone physical distancing – are just not possible for prisoners.
Under international law, India has an obligation to ensure the physical and mental health and well-being of inmates. However, with an occupancy rate of over 117%, precarious hygienic conditions and inadequate health services, the overcrowded Indian prisons constitute the perfect environment for the spread of coronavirus.
In a bid to contain the spread of the disease among inmates and prison staff, the Supreme Court asked state governments on 23 March 2020 to take steps to decongest the country’s prison system by considering granting parole to those convicted or charged with offenses carrying jail terms of up to seven years.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet also called on governments to “examine ways to release those particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, among them older detainees and those who are sick, as well as low-risk offenders.”
Various state governments in India have now begun releasing detainees. However, there is a concern that hundreds of Kashmiri youth, journalists, political leaders, human right defenders and others arbitrarily arrested in the course of 2019, including following the repeal of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution on 5 August 2019, will not be among those benefiting from the measure. Article 370 provided special status to Jammu & Kashmir.
Human rights groups and UN experts have repeatedly called for the release as a matter of priority of “those detained without sufficient legal basis, including political prisoners and others detained simply for expressing critical or dissenting views.”
Last month, the Ministry of Home Affairs revealed that 7,357 persons had been arrested in Jammu & Kashmir since 5 August 2019. While the majority have since been released, hundreds are still detained under sections 107 and 151 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), and the Public Security Act (PSA), a controversial law which allows the administrative detention of any individual for up to two years without charge or trial. Reportedly, many of those still detained are minors.
Many of those detained were transferred to prisons all across India, thousands of kilometers away from their homes, hampering their lawyers’ and relatives’ ability to visit them. Some of the families, often too poor to afford to travel, have been left with nothing but concerns over the physical and psychological well-being of their loved ones.
Mr. Miyan Abdul Qayoom, a human rights lawyer and President of the Jammu & Kashmir High Court Bar Association, was also cut off from his family and lawyer. Detained since 4 August 2019 in India’s Uttar Pradesh State, he was transferred to Tihar jail in New Delhi following a deterioration of his health. Mr. Qayoom, 70, suffers from diabetes, double vessel heart disease, and kidney problems.
Mr. Ghulam Mohammed Bhat was also transferred to a jail in Uttar Pradesh. In December 2019, he died thousands of kilometers away from his home at the age of 65 due to lack of medical care.
With the entire country in a lockdown and a ban on prison visits for the duration of the outbreak imposed, inmates are more isolated from the outside world than ever. In such a situation, prison authorities must ensure that alternative means of communication, such as videoconferencing, phone calls and emails, are allowed. However, this has not often been the case. Especially in Jammu & Kashmir, where full internet services are yet to be restored after a communication blackout imposed on the population on 5 August 2019, contacts between inmates and the outside world are even more limited.
- Amnesty International India
- Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA)
- CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
- International Commissions of Jurists (ICJ)
- International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
- World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)
To download the statement with detailed information and key recommendations, click here.
Apr 6, 2020 | Feature articles, Multimedia items, News, Video clips
As of 8:00am CET this morning, the Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases tracker by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University in the US recorded 169,049,480 confirmed cases of individuals who had contracted the COVID-19 disease in 192 countries, and 3,513,137 people who had succumbed to the virus. Read all the ICJ articles on the crisis.
Against this background, the aim of this blog is to highlight the necessity of ensuring the consistency of public health policies taken as part of the global responses to the COVID-19 pandemic with human rights law and standards.
As outlined in a prescient 2019 Lancet Commission report – The legal determinants of health: harnessing the power of law for global health and sustainable development – the law, and a firm commitment to the rule of law, play a critical role in the pursuit of global health with justice.
Ultimately, scientifically sound, evidence-based, human rights compliant, transparent and accountable public health policies and practices will also be more effective, as they will, in turn, elicit greater public support, including by prompting greater adherence to public health policy directives imposing restrictive measures on human rights.
As Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights recently affirmed, ‘COVID-19 is a test for our societies, and we are all learning and adapting as we respond to the virus. Human dignity and rights need to be front and centre in that effort, not an afterthought’.
China, where cases of COVID-19 were first documented, has been questioned from inside and outside for its response to the crisis, at first attempting to shut down information about the virus, leading to arrests and detentions. Outside China, while some COVID-19 health policies have been evidence-based, such as scaled-up, accurate testing for suspected cases, others are ineffective and overly broad, increasing stigmatization and misinformation.
Around the world, people of Asian descent have been subjected to xenophobia, stigmatization and racist attacks. Moreover, many States have now imposed extensive travel restrictions or even blanket travel bans; some have gone as far as using the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext to promote their xenophobic and anti-asylum agenda and have now shut down their borders to refugee claimants, thereby flouting the right of anyone to seek asylum from persecution in other countries.
In a frontal attack against women’s human rights, in Texas and Ohio, the authorities have moved to ban healthcare providers from performing abortions in most circumstances – purporting to do so to respond to the global COVID-19 crisis. There is also a world of false information on COVID-19. For instance, Indonesia’s health minister suggested that Islamic prayers shielded people from the virus.
To foster scientifically accurate, human rights compliant global health responses – including to events such as the COVID-19 pandemic – it is crucial to enhance dialogue between the public health and human rights sectors. A good place to start framing a productive exchange in this respect is to take a close and simultaneous look at the International Health Regulations (IHR (2005)) – an agreement among 196 WHO Member States to work together for global health security – and to the Siracusa Principles on the Limitation and Derogation Provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (the Siracusa Principles), setting out criteria to determine the lawfulness of measures restricting or otherwise limiting human rights taken by States to respond to – among other things – public health emergencies.
International Health Regulations & Travel Restrictions
Article 3(1) of the IHR (2005), setting out the principles informing the regulations, recalls that, ‘[t]he implementation of these Regulations shall be with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons’. And, perhaps tellingly, in Article 32, concerning the treatment of travellers, the IHR proclaim, among other things, that, ‘[i]n implementing health measures under these Regulations, States Parties shall treat travellers with respect for their dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms’.
Notwithstanding the express human rights obligations enshrined in the IHR, current public policy responses to the ongoing crisis – and even public discourses around those responses – make very few, if any, direct references to human rights and, in fact, seem to be oblivious to the impact that measures taken and/or considered in the response to COVID-19 have on human rights.
But the IHR, as noted in a recent piece by Roojin Habibi et al, restrict ‘the measures countries can implement when addressing public health risks to those measures that are supported by science, commensurate with the risks involved, and anchored in human rights. The intention of the IHR is that countries should not take needless measures that harm people or that disincentivise countries from reporting new risks to international public health authorities’.
Siracusa Principles
The 1985 Siracusa Principles provide a good basis to flesh out what a human rights compliant public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic must entail. They detail criteria – by now firmly enshrined in international human rights law and standards – to determine the lawfulness of State measures restrictive of human rights.
According to the Siracusa Principles, for instance, when a State invokes public health as a ground for limiting certain rights, its actions ‘must be specifically aimed at preventing disease or injury or providing care for the sick or injured’. Even in circumstances when it is undeniable that a public health emergency may threaten the life of a nation, the Siracusa Principles reaffirm the obligation of States to ensure that any public health response to such an emergency be rooted in and compatible with human rights law and standards. Importantly, the Principles provide further interpretive guidance to States, proclaiming that restrictions on human rights may be justifiable only when they are:
- provided for and carried out in accordance with the law;
- based on scientific evidence;
- directed toward a legitimate objective;
- strictly necessary in a democratic society;
- the least intrusive and restrictive means available;
- neither arbitrary nor discriminatory in application;
- of limited duration; and
- subject to review.
The final condition – that State action be subject to review – is critical. Analogous requirements can be seen in other areas of international law. In the asylum and refugee context, for example, detention guidelines promulgated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees emphasize that confinement on health grounds beyond an initial medical check must be subject to judicial oversight. Similarly, the Human Rights Committee’s General Comment no. 35 makes clear that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ‘entitles anyone who is deprived of liberty by arrest or detention’ to take their case before a court to decide on ‘the lawfulness of detention’, enshrining the principle of habeas corpus.
The General Comment adds that this right also applies to house arrest, as a form of deprivation of liberty. Of course, whether involuntary home confinement constitutes deprivation of liberty – entitling those subjected to such a measure to challenge the lawfulness of their detention before a court – is a question of fact, depending, in turn, on the degree of the physical confinement imposed. Voluntarily choosing to stay at home in response to State authorities’ exhortation to do so, on the other hand, does not constitute deprivation of liberty.
Furthermore, any State action must comply with the rule of law and should respect the separation of powers. Neither the executive nor public health authorities should be immune from having their actions legitimately scrutinized by other branches of the State, namely, the legislature and the judiciary. Checks and balances are necessary to ensure respect for human rights and for democratic legitimacy.
In conclusion, both the IHR (2005) and the Siracusa Principles remind us of the fact that State responses to global public health emergencies cannot be unfettered, and must comply with States’ human rights obligations. Public responses to health emergencies and human rights need not be in conflict – indeed, grounding States’ public health measures in the human rights framework provides the most effective way to advance global health with justice.
The Lancet Commission report suggests one way to further identify human rights and rule of law compliant measures in the current and future global public health policy response. The report calls for a partnership between ‘legal and health experts to create an independent standing commission on global health and the law’ that would propose ‘evidence-based legal interventions for addressing major global health challenges, reforms of the global health architecture and international law, and strategies to build and strengthen global and national health law capacities’.
We should heed that call.
(Article written by Sam Zarifi and Kate Powers)
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Additional links
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Apr 6, 2020 | Advocacy, Analysis briefs, News
The briefing paper is published today in the context of significant uncertainty and distress experienced by migrant workers, refugees, asylum seekers, stateless people and other non-citizens in South Africa as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures that the authorities have taken with the stated aim of responding to it.
“All people residing in South Africa have the right to work and in earn a living in the country under international human rights law. The Government of South Africa should guard against laws, policies and public statements that discriminate against non-citizens especially during the public health emergency caused by COVID-19. Lockdown regulations and directions must be conceived and implemented in a way that fully enables all migrant workers performing essential services, including informal traders, waste reclaimers and shop owners to operate on an equal basis with South African citizens,” said Arnold Tsunga, the ICJ’s Africa Director.
The ICJ has previously condemned discriminatory statements made about non-citizen owners of “spaza shops” made by Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni in the context of COVID-19, and called on President Ramaphosa to publically repudiate these statements.
The briefing paper, which was produced in consultation with domestic, South African human rights organizations: the Socio-Economic Rights Institute and Lawyers for Human Rights, sets out the following clear principles of international human rights law regarding non-citizens’ right to work in South Africa:
- Everyone, regardless of citizenship status, has the right to work in South Africa under, among others, the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights;
- This right to work, which is binding on South Africa, adds to the government’s constitutional obligations in terms of rights at work or the “right to fair labour practices”;
- The right to work protects both formal and informal workers, including non-citizens, in accordance with ILO Recommendation 204 and the General Comments of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights;
- The right to work applies to non-citizens irrespective of their documentary status in South Africa;
- No restrictions on the “core” obligations placed on states in terms of the right to work, as set out by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, are permissible;
- Restrictions or limitations on the right to work are permissible if they are set out in clearly in legislation, in pursuit of a legitimate objective, and are reasonable and proportionate taking into account the need to protect human dignity consistently with international human rights law and the Constitution;
- Any restrictions on non-citizens’ rights to work should be administrative (such as requiring permits or documentation), rather than substantive or categorical, otherwise they are likely to amount to prohibited forms of discrimination in terms of international and South African law; and
- Any administrative process designed by the State in this regard must be reasonable and proportionate and geared towards facilitating non-citizens ability to work in SA instead of limiting them.
Contact:
Tim Fish Hodgson, ICJ Legal Adviser, e: tim.hodgson(a)icj.org ; c: +2782871990
Shaazia Ebrahim, ICJ Media Officer, e: shaazia.ebrahim(a)icj.org ; c: +27716706719
Download
South Africa-Non Citizens Right to Work-Advocacy-Analysis Brief-2020-ENG (full paper in PDF)
Apr 3, 2020 | News
Millions of indigenous people in Guatemala (Mayas, Garífunas and Xincas) are at increased risk of falling victim to COVID-19 unless the government immediately provides them with necessary information and ensures they have access to adequate health care without discrimination, the ICJ said today.
“Guatemala’s indigenous people face an increased risk of suffering during this global pandemic because of the historic and systemic discrimination against them, which means that they don’t have access to proper information needed to protect themselves, nor to health care should they fall ill because of COVID-19,” said Ramón Cadena, ICJ’s Central America Director.
“The most suffering indigenous communities could be those very poor indigenous communities living at the border with México.”
The ICJ called on Guatemalan authorities to ensure that information about public health measures regarding COVID-19 be offered in the languages most used by indigenous communities (mayan languages such as ixil, quiché, mam, q´eqchí, kaqchikel; and garífuna and xinca languages).
During the pandemic the State of Guatemala has not taken into account the difficulties, such as financial, geographical, technological or linguistic barriers, that indigenous people face in accessing information.
On the other side, the ICJ has noticed that the information about the governmental measures to face the pandemic, has been disseminated in a very limited way.
Indigenous communities have been excluded from the official health system because of the discrimination against them and the lack of resources invested in the health system of Guatemala due to processes of privatization of social services, which have been implemented in Guatemala after the signature of the Peace Accords.
“The general weakness of the Guatemalan public health system, historic racism against the indigenous community and the tremendous general social inequality in the country all aggravate the potential impact of the pandemic on the indigenous community,” Cadena said.
The ICJ urges the State of Guatemala to take the necessary legislative, administrative, and judicial measures to protect Indigenous Peoples and preserve their human rights during the current emergency, specifically their right to health, food, and housing.
The ICJ also called on the Guatemalan government to avoid measures that threaten the life and dignity of people, including those from the indigenous community who are generally most subject to violations of their civil and political rights.
“Any measures taken in response to the pandemic must be limited to those that are strictly necessary, legitimate, and proportionate to the risk facing the community, and limited in time and subject to review,” Cadena said.
“There are certain guarantees, such as the right to an effective judicial remedy, that cannot be suspended or repealed and that are vital so that citizens, including indigenous people, can safeguard their rights, and even as the pandemic inevitably affects the legal system the government must do all it can to avoid discrimination against the indigenous community, which already suffers from racism and lack of access to justice.”
Apr 2, 2020 | News, Op-eds
An opinion piece by Shaazia Ebrahim, ICJ Media Officer, and Tim Fish Hodgson, ICJ Legal Adviser on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, based in South Africa.
The inhumane conditions that most South African residents are subjected to in their daily lives will continue to deepen as the coronavirus spreads.
South Africans are encouraged to take precautionary measures to curb the spread of the pandemic by practising social distancing and intensifying hygiene control. The country will also be under a nationwide lockdown in order to “fundamentally disrupt the chain of transmission across society” from 26 March for 21 days.
The problem is that the recommended measures in South Africa, similarly to those of the World Health Organisation, assume that everyone lives in a house. A house which is at no risk of being destroyed by the state or private owners of the land upon which it is built: a house with access to water, sanitation and other basic services.
But the reality is that millions of South Africans do not live in a house, but in rudimentary structures in poor conditions. In a statement released this week, Abahlali baseMjondolo, a shack dwellers’ movement with members in various provinces across South Africa, articulated this.
Abahali’s frank assessment of the situation is that “it does not seem possible to prevent this virus from spreading when we still live in the mud like pigs”.
It is under the same conditions described by Abahlali baseMjondolo that many of the urban and rural poor in South Africa will be required to live under “lockdown”, commencing from midnight tonight.
Access to basic services: ‘if one person gets infected it’s disastrous’
Speaking before the release of the statement, Abahlali president S’bu Zikode expressed the distress that many around South Africa are currently experiencing. “Abahlali is very concerned about the outbreak of the coronavirus. The reason is, of course, that the conditions that we are subjected [give] us reason to be scared and worried,” he said.
“Social distancing” is difficult for many in South Africa. Government regulations say no more than 100 people should be “gathering” and people are more generally encouraged to keep a distance from one another. In Abahlali’s settlements, Zikode explains, there are thousands living close together under strenuous conditions.
“That on its own is automatically disrespecting the call from the president”, he said.
Abahlali, alongside various other South African movements and organisations, have for years been calling for the state to improve their living conditions and provide them with access to water, sanitation and other basic services.
In 2019 the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights noted its concern about “the large number of people living in inadequate housing, including those in informal settlements, without access to basic services; the growing number of informal settlements in urban areas due to rapid urbanisation”.
These calls have not received a sufficiently serious response from the government. Litigation to ensure access to basic services remains commonplace.
In this context, while hygiene has rightly been touted as one of the most important preventatives from spreading Covid-19, it is difficult to imagine how the majority living in South Africa will be able to ensure even basic measures such as handwashing.
Abahlali notes that in many informal settlements “hundreds of people [are] sharing one tap”. In this context, it is easy to see why leaders of Abahlali think that as it stands, preventing the spread of coronavirus is very important, but all but impossible.
“As leaders of Abahlali, we see it as once one person gets infected in the settlements, suddenly the entire settlement will be disastrous,” Zikode said.
A moratorium on evictions: halting evictions ‘will save lives’
Making matters worse, members of Abahlali, like many others in their country, lack security of tenure. As trying as their current circumstances may be, Abahlali warns of the potentially devastating effects of evictions during the pandemic. Another common way to induce evictions is to disconnect existing access to water, electricity and sanitation.
This is why Abahlali demands that “all evictions must be stopped with immediate effect” and that “all disconnections from self-organised access to water, electricity and sanitation must be stopped with immediate effect”. Indeed, it is difficult to see how any eviction during the pandemic could be “just and equitable” in “all relevant circumstances” as is required by South African law.
The call for a “moratorium” on evictions has also been made by a large group of social movements and civil society organisations in South Africa in a letter to the president. It has also received clear support from the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing, who has called for a “global ban” on evictions worldwide:
“The logical extension of a logical stay-at-home policy is a global ban on evictions. There must be no evictions of anyone, anywhere, for any reason. Simply put: a global ban on evictions will save lives”, she said. The International Commission of Jurists has echoed these calls and the calls for connection of emergency water for all before the nationwide lockdown commences.
Coronavirus, the right to housing and access to land
In February, in giving input to the parliamentary committee contemplating the need to amend the Constitution to expedite land reform, Abahali argued that land is not a commodity and that the Constitution should include a “right to land” which it does not at present.
“Land should be shared and should be viewed as a public good”, Zikode explains.
Abahlali argues that the absence of a right to land in the Constitution undermines the constitutional right to housing: without land there can be no housing. Consistently with this logic, as early as 2000, South Africa’s Constitutional Court held emphatically that:
“For a person to have access to adequate housing all of these conditions need to be met: there must be land, there must be services, there must be a dwelling.”
The current crisis brought on by the coronavirus adds weight to Abahlali’s position on land. Access to land and security of tenure are necessary for access to adequate housing. If people have access to land and secure tenure, evictions are not a constant threat to their well-being.
Without access to housing and basic services, public health is severely compromised on a daily basis. Public health emergencies such as the coronavirus pandemic put even further pressure on an already compromised living environment. They therefore highlight that for many people, the right to adequate housing can only be discharged with full access to land.
The obligations of the South African government
The government of South Africa has rightly been praised for its proactive response to the coronavirus pandemic. The regulations passed in terms of the Disaster Management Act require that measures taken to combat coronavirus are implemented “as far as possible, without affecting service delivery in relation to the realisation of the rights” including the rights to housing and basic services, healthcare, social security and education.
The president’s announcement of a countrywide lockdown included a commitment that “temporary shelters that meet the necessary hygiene standards will be identified for homeless people”. Nevertheless, Abahlali’s members, who are not strictly homeless, might take cold comfort.
Disappointingly, the president failed to announce a moratorium on evictions or make any mention of evictions at all. This not only leaves many more people under the threat of being rendered homeless but may also lead to devastating displacement that will make the further spread of coronavirus possible.
The president did indicate that “emergency water supplies” are “being provided to informal settlements and rural areas”.
However, he did not make mention of whether expedited or emergency provision of other basic services such as sanitation, electricity and waste removal services where they are not currently available would occur. Urgent calls for emergency water connection coming out of Khayelitsha suggest that in many places in major informal settlements such emergency connections have not occurred.
The government of South Africa should be applauded for taking emergency measures. However, in so doing, it is implicitly acknowledging that many — if not most — South African residents have been living on a daily basis in conditions that are insufficient for them to live healthy, dignified lives.
This highlights the government’s existing and continuous failures to respect, protect, promote and fulfil the rights to access to housing and basic services.
The coronavirus, therefore, stands a stark reminder to all in South Africa of the dire impacts of social inequality in the country and the pressing need for government to pursue the realisation of all its obligations in terms of social and economic rights protected in the South African Constitution and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It also lends strong credence to the need for serious consideration of Abahlali’s claim for the need of a constitutionally protected right to land.
As Zikode concludes:
“Abahlali has always been about the land, decent housing, and dignity. Without land, housing is impossible. Without land, dignity is compromised. Land is close to the heart of many mainly black South Africans and it’s very close to the heart of Abahlali.”
Originally published in Daily Maverick
Apr 2, 2020 | News
Today, the ICJ joined more than 100 other organizations to urge States to ensure that any use of digital technologies to track and monitor individuals and populations as part of measures to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic is fully human rights compliant.
The organizations warned that efforts to contain the virus must not be used as a cover to impose greatly expanded systems of invasive digital surveillance that are likely to be abused, unless adequate safeguards are put in place to protect freedom of expression, the right to privacy and other rights.
Technology can and should play an important role in the midst of the current crisis to protect the rights to health, life and security.
Deploying non-consensual State digital surveillance powers however can risk violations of the rights to privacy, freedom of expression, information and association. If implemented in an arbitrary or discriminatory way, and without adequate oversight, these measures risk damaging public trust in state authorities and undermining the effectiveness of any public health response. Non-consensual digital surveillance measures may also disproportionately exacerbate discrimination against already marginalized communities.
The organizations called on all governments to ensure that increased digital surveillance measures meet the following conditions:
- Surveillance measures adopted to address the pandemic must be lawful, necessary and proportionate. Governments must be transparent about the measures they are taking so that they can be scrutinized and, if appropriate, later modified, retracted, or overturned.
- Expansion of monitoring or surveillance measures must be time-bound, and only continue for as long as necessary to address the current pandemic.
- States must ensure that increased collection, retention, and aggregation of personal data, including health data, is only used for the purposes of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Data collected, retained, and aggregated to respond to the pandemic must be limited in scope, time-bound in relation to the pandemic and must not be used for commercial or any other purposes.
- Governments must take every effort to protect people’s data, including ensuring sufficient security of any personal data collected and of any devices, applications, networks, or services involved in collection, transmission, processing, and storage. Any claims that data is anonymous must be based on evidence and supported with sufficient information regarding how it has been anonymized.
- Any use of digital surveillance technologies in responding to COVID-19, including big data and artificial intelligence systems, must address the risk that these tools will facilitate discrimination and other rights abuses against racial minorities, people living in poverty, and other marginalized populations, whose needs and lived realities may be obscured or misrepresented in large datasets.
- If governments enter into data sharing agreements with other public or private sector entities, they must be based on law, and the existence of these agreements and information necessary to assess their impact on privacy and human rights must be publicly disclosed – in writing, with sunset clauses, public oversight and other safeguards by default. Businesses involved in efforts by governments to tackle COVID-19 must undertake due diligence to ensure they respect human rights, and ensure any intervention is firewalled from other business and commercial interests.
- Any response must incorporate accountability protections and safeguards against abuse. Increased surveillance efforts related to COVID-19 should not fall under the domain of security or intelligence agencies and must be subject to effective oversight by appropriate independent bodies. Individuals must be given the opportunity to know about and challenge any COVID-19 related measures to collect, aggregate, and retain, and use data.
- COVID-19 related responses that include data collection efforts should include means for free, active, and meaningful participation of relevant stakeholders, in particular experts in the public health sector and marginalized population groups.
Link to joint statement here.
See also
ICJ, ‘Southeast Asia: States must respect and protect rights in combating misinformation online relating to COVID-19’, 1 April 2020
