Apr 21, 2020
La Guía para Profesionales No. 14 de la CIJ, inicialmente publicada en inglés, describe los estándares internacionales que deben considerarse en las investigaciones y los enjuiciamientos que se lleven a cabo en los casos de muertes potencialmente ilícitas.
Dichas investigaciones deben cumplir los estándares internacionales del derecho internacional de los derechos humanos.
La Guía aborda los contenidos del Protocolo de Minnesota sobre la Investigación de Muertes Potencialmente Ilícitas (2016). Dicho texto fue publicado por la Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos en 2017, y ofrece orientación a los Estados para aplicar los Principios de Minnesota y el deber de investigar en virtud del derecho a la vida. La versión original del Protocolo fue realizada en 1991, y su revisión contó con la experiencia de distintas organizaciones, entre ellas, la Comisión Internacional de Juristas.
La versión en inglés de la Guía No. 14 fue publicada en septiembre de 2019 en el marco de la Iniciativa global de rendición de cuentas de la CIJ. Su versión en español se publica gracias al apoyo financiero de la Unión Europea, en desarrollo del proyecto “Promoviendo justicia para ejecuciones extrajudiciales y desapariciones forzadas en Colombia, Guatemala y Perú”.
Esta Guía se nutre de otras Guías para Profesionales de la CIJ, en especial:
Universal-PG 14 Unlawful death-Publications-Reports-Practitioners Guides series-2020-SPA (Guia N°14 en español)
Apr 9, 2020 | Advocacy, Non-legal submissions
The ICJ has joined other NGOs highlighting key human rights issues in the COVID-19 pandemic, at a virtual meeting of the UN Human Rights Council.
In the informal conversation, exceptionally organised by video-conference, the High Commissioner for Human Rights presented a statement, as did the President of the Council and a number of States, followed by several statements by NGOs.
The ICJ joined statements delivered by CIVICUS (on civil and political rights), ISHR (on the UN system response), and FORUM-Asia (on economic, social and cultural rights), on behalf of a large number of NGOs from around the world.
The statements focussed on, among other things:
- the obligations of States individually and collectively to mobilize the maximum available resources to respond to the pandemic and protect those at risk, including by respecting, protecting and fulfilling economic, social and cultural rights;
- the need to guard against abuse of emergency powers and undue restrictions on fundamental rights, including non-discrimination, freedom of expression and right to access information, the right to privacy, rights of persons deprived of liberty, and taking into account the situation of particularly-at-risk groups;
- the role of the Human Rights Council, Special Procedures and Secretary General to monitor, report on, and respond to human rights aspects of the pandemic and States’ responses, and ensuring that civil society continues to be able to participate in all relevant UN and other processes.
The full statements may be downloaded in PDF format here:
Civil and Political Rights: UN-JointStatement-COVID19CPR-2020-final
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: UN-JointStatement-COVID19ESCR-2020-final
United Nations Mechanisms: UN-JointStatement-COVID19UN-2020-final
Abbreviated versions were delivered in the dialogue, due to the limited time available.
In extensive and detailed closing remarks, the High Commissioner responded to many of the questions and observations made during the discussion, concluding, on the topic of access to justice in times of crisis, as follows (unofficial transcription):
“Courts become more important than ever to safeguard rights in times when major decisions with broad impact are being taken and implemented at great speed. In these circumstances, we have already seen the real risk for abuse of power, legal over-generalization and mistake. The courts must remain available to address these issues, if necessary of course by modifying their working methods. We have seen courts in many countries taking measures to ensure they remain accessible while protecting their staff and clients.”
A video recording of the event can be viewed here.
The High Commissioner’s specific remarks on access to justice can be accessed directly here.
Apr 6, 2020 | Feature articles, News
A Feature Article by the Access to Justice for Women Team of the ICJ.
As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across the globe, many governments are introducing a spectrum of measures to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, including travel bans, lockdowns, curfews, and school, workplace and border closures.
While it is important that States act decisively in discharge of their obligations to protect the rights to life and health of all people during this pandemic, it is equal that they do so in a human rights compliant manner, so as not to compound the harms brought directly by the virus.
This entails, among other things, acting in a manner that provides equal protection and is non-discriminatory. Complying with these principles requires taking into account gender impacts and providing for gender-specific responses.
However, a number of measures presently being taken by governments around the world to attempt to curb the spread of the virus can be expected to exacerbate pre-existing gender inequalities and therefore disproportionately affect women’s enjoyment of social and economic rights.
Many women who are disabled, refugees, migrants, detainees, living in poverty and or belonging to ethnic, racial, religious or sexual minority groups are experiencing or are likely to experience intersecting forms of discrimination during this time of crisis.
What Does #StayHome Mean to Women?
Lockdowns, quarantines, and school closures to control the pandemic in many countries have a differential effect on women.
Women and girls are most expected to perform caregiving role within families, which means less economic and work opportunities for them and thus denying their basic rights to development.
This condition is worsened if they are being quarantined with an abusive partner as they are exposed to greater risks of intimate partner violence during the outbreak.
Unfortunately, in many places there is a significant lack of guidelines or information on how to contact police, access medical treatment, psychological support, or access to shelters when domestic violence occurs during the pandemic.
In the UK, for example, while 25 organizations helping domestic violence victims have reported an increase in their cases since the surge of the COVID-19 epidemic, one quarter said they could not effectively support victims because of technical issues, inability to meet victims, and staff sickness.
Additionally, with resources already stretched in fighting the spread of the virus, many State authorities may not see as a priority access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services for women, which are already restricted by prohibitive laws and customs in many contexts.
This results in significant limitations on women’s rights to menstrual health, maternal health, and safe abortion.
Women at Work
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), women are over-represented in more affected sectors (such as services) or in occupations that are at the frontline of dealing with the pandemic.
The ILO estimates that 58.6 percent of employed women work in the services sector around the world. Women also have less access to social protection and will bear a disproportionate burden in the care economy, in the case of closure of schools or care systems.
Women migrant workers are also vulnerable to the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, as extensive travel restrictions constrain both their ability to access their places of work in destination countries and return to their families.
Women at the Border: Refugees & Asylum seekers
There is a severe lack of secure, safe and accessible infrastructure and services in most refugee camps and temporary settlements.
Asylum seekers face right now a long wait if the courts are closed due to the pandemic, or worse, being returned to their home country without having a chance to pursue their claims, sometimes in violation of the principle of non refoulement.
As the virus hits overcrowded displacement sites, the consequences can expected be catastrophic. Moreover, in this setting, studies found that women and girls are often exposed to sexual violence and exploitation when they are forced to openly defecate or walk to shared sanitation facilities.
All State Measures to COVID-19 Must Be Gender Responsive
Under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), States have duty to achieve the full realization of the right to everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) also provides of the obligation of States to take all appropriate measure to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of health care in order to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, access to health care services, including those related to family planning.
Furthermore, failure to recognize the gender dynamics of outbreaks limits the effectiveness of response efforts and consequently impedes women’s rights.
In order for the response to disease outbreaks such as COVID-19 to be effective and not reproduce or perpetuate gender and health inequities, it is important that gender norms and roles are identified and incorporated in all socio- economic measures established to counter the pandemic.
Further, the emergency preparedness and response plan must address gender roles, responsibilities, social norms and specific needs of women.
States should also provide new strategies for women victims of domestic violence to be protected during the lockdown.
Governments should include the work of domestic violence professionals an essential service and provide emergency resources for anti-domestic abuse organizations to help them respond to increased demand for services.
They should also consider, alternative means, such as through “pop-up” counseling centers, reporting in pharmacies, to encourage women to report domestic violence.
Governments must ensure all measures to combat the outbreak are gender responsive while being in strict accordance with human rights standards.
While states may limit or derogate from certain rights to meet a public health crisis, such restrictions are always subject to the principles of legality, necessity proportionality and nondiscrimination.
Given that women are often to be found in the more vulnerable categories of informal work, for instance, as domestic workers or self-employed home-based workers, authorities should enhance universal access to collectively-financed health services for all, including uninsured workers and their families.
States must also expand access to collectively-financed paid sick leave, sickness benefits, and parental or care leave to ensure income security for those who are sick, quarantined or caring for children, elderly or other family members.
Moreover, governments should ensure that women asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, and refugees are included in national COVID-19 surveillance, preparedness, and response plans, and ensure that menstrual hygiene, reproductive, and other primary health care commodities are well-stocked and available.
Lastly, perspectives, experiences, and voices of diverse women, including LBTI persons (as enshrined in the Yogyakarta Principles), should be included in decision-making process around the COVID-19 outbreak measures because effective global responses, to public health emergencies must be in line with the rights and needs of affected women.
***
Download the Op-Ed in other languages:
Nepali (PDF)
Tamil (PDF)
Sinhala (PDF)
Indonesian (PDF)
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)
Read also
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Venezuela: lack of access to safe water aggravates the COVID-19 pandemic
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Vaccine patents: healthy or harmful?
ICJ calls on States to ensure human rights compliant access to COVID-19 vaccines (UN Statement)
Peru: the COVID-19 vaccine demands international and national solidarity
Harmonizing global health law and human rights law to develop rights-based approaches to global health emergencies
The ICJ and ZimRights ask for urgent intervention on access to COVID-19 vaccines from African Commission Mechanism
ICJ urges the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to call on States to comply with their obligations to ensure equitable access to vaccines for all
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Sri Lanka: Mahara prison killings must be properly investigated and urgent measures taken to protect detainees from COVID-19
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Thailand: need to protect the right to health of the most marginalized highlighted in public seminar on human rights and the COVID-19 Pandemic
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Facebook, Twitter and social media in times of COVID 19 and #BlackLivesMatter
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ICJ Covid-19 Emergency Appeal: donate now!
ICJ webinar highlights difficulties in responding to gender based violence during the Covid-19 pandemic (watch below)
The right to water in India and the COVID-19 crisis – ICJ Briefing Paper
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India on the brink of Hunger Crisis during COVID-19 Pandemic, warns ICJ Briefing Paper
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European Union: ICJ joins call for urgent EU response to Hungary’s COVID-19 emergency law
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Amid COVID-19 crisis, Polish parliament must reject regressive proposals on sexual and reproductive rights
Myanmar: Government must lift online restrictions in conflict-affected areas to ensure access to information during COVID-19 pandemic
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Read ICJ legal blogs on OpinioJuris
The COVID-19 measures impact on the rights of migrants and refugees in the EU: access to the right to seek asylum and reception and living conditions
The Right to Health in the Occupied Palestinian Territory during the COVID-19 Pandemic
The right to social security: navigating the narrow passage between virus suppression and economy resuscitation
A Radical Shift in Libyan and International Priorities is Necessary to Protect Health and Save Lives in Libya (+ Arabic version)
Gender Based Violence during the COVID-19 Pandemic and economic, social and cultural rights
The Right to Health of Venezuelans in Colombia: From Policy to Practice (Part 2)
The Right to Health of Venezuelans in Colombia: From Principle to Policy (Part 1)
COVID-19 Symposium: The Use of Criminal Sanctions in COVID-19 Responses – Enforcement of Public Health Measures, Part II
COVID-19 Symposium: The Use of Criminal Sanctions in COVID-19 Responses – Exposure and Transmission, Part I
COVID-19 Symposium: The Courts and Coronavirus (Part II)
COVID-19 Symposium: The Courts and Coronavirus (Part I)
COVID-19 Symposium: COVID-19 Responses and State Obligations Concerning the Right to Health (Part 2)
COVID-19 Symposium: COVID-19 Responses and State Obligations Concerning the Right to Health (Part 1)
Watch video interviews
Frederick Rawski, Director of ICJ’s Asia & Pacific Programme talks with ICJ Commissioner and former Chief Justice of the High Court of Delhi, Ajit Prakash Shah about the role of the Indian judiciary as “protector of Indian people” in the context of the Covid-19 epidemic.
ICJ Director of Media & Communications Olivier van Bogaert talks with ICJ President Robert Goldman about the COVID-19 situation in the USA and its impact on human right and the rule of law. They also discuss the killing of George Floyd.
ICJ Senior Legal Adviser Massimo Frigo (Europe Programme) talks with ICJ Vice-President Radmila Dragicevic Dicic about the COVID-19 situation in Serbia:
ICJ Senior Legal Adviser Massimo Frigo (Europe Programme) talks with prominent judge of the Tribunal of Milan, Martina Flamini about Italy, the European country that has been first hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
ICJ Director of Media & Communications Olivier van Bogaert talks with ICJ Commissioner Belisário dos Santos Júnior about the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil and the health, political and judicial crisis that it triggered.
ICJ Senior Legal Adviser Massimo Frigo (Europe Programme) talks with prominent human rights lawyer Zia Oloumi about France’s Rule of Law and Human Rights during COVID-19:
ICJ Communications Officer Shaazia Ebrahim talks with ICJ Legal Adviser Khanyo Farisè about the gendered impact of COVID-19 in Southern Africa.
ICJ Senior Legal Adviser Massimo Frigo (Europe Programme) talks about Poland with prominent human rights lawyer, Maria Ejchart-Dubois:
ICJ Senior Legal Adviser Massimo Frigo (Europe Programme) talks about Kazakhstan with ICJ Legal Consultant Dmitriy Nurumov.
ICJ Communications Officer Shaazia Ebrahim talks with ICJ Legal Adviser Tim Fish Hodgson about how COVID-19 has impacted socio-economic rights in South Africa:
ICJ Senior Legal Adviser Massimo Frigo (Europe Programme) talks about Uzbekistan with ICJ Legal Consultant Dilfuza Kurolova.
ICJ Senior Legal Adviser Massimo Frigo (Europe Programme) talks with Turkish lawyer and ICJ Legal Consultant Kerem Altiparmak:
ICJ Communications Officer Shaazia Ebrahim talks to ICJ Legal Adviser Justice Mavedzenge about COVID-19 and human rights issues in Zimbabwe:
ICJ Communications Officer Shaazia Ebrahim talks to Arnold Tsunga, Director of ICJ Africa Programme:
ICJ Senior Legal Adviser Massimo Frigo (Europe Programme) talks with Carolina Villadiego Burbano, ICJ Legal and Policy Adviser for Latin America, about COVID-19 and human rights issues in Colombia:
ICJ Commissioner Justice Kalyan Shreshta talks about the COVID-19 situation in Nepal:
Which answers from economic and social rights to the COVID-19 pandemic? ICJ Senior Legal Adviser Massimo Frigo (Europe Programme) talks with ICJ Legal Adviser Tim Fish Hodgson (Africa Programme)
Follow webinars
The ICJ brought together first responders from Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and Africa to discuss how they were responding to #GBV during the #COVID19 pandemic.
Additional links
Nina Sun and ICJ Senior Legal Adviser Livio Zilli talk about Criminalization & COVID-19: Public Health and Human Rights Implications
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
