The UN Secretary General has characterised the pandemic as a ‘public health emergency … an economic crisis. A social crisis. And a human crisis that is fast becoming a human rights crisis’. Other UN agencies predict global mass unemployment and severe food insecurity . If urgent action is not taken, existing structural inequalities will expand and entrench and threaten the protection of human rights and the …
On May 8 the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres launched a global Appeal to Address and Counter COVID-19 Hate Speech . A few days later, the UN published a Guidance Note on Addressing and Countering COVID-19 related Hate Speech . Both of these follow (and can build upon) steps taken by the UN in response to COVID-19, as well as the 2019 UN Plan of Action on Hate Speech . The SG’s appeal also comes amid an increased awareness of how hate speech and discrimination …
According to her son, Eleanor Roosevelt said the same prayer every night and closed with this wish: ‘save us from ourselves and show us a vision of a world made new.’ This prayer reminds me that in the midst of managing crisis we must also keep one eye on the better future we want to create. COVID-19 is both a …
In a significant move for women’s rights in Sudan and the wider region, the country’s transitional government has outlawed the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). The amendment to the criminal code that makes ‘whoever removed, mutilated the female genitalia by cutting, mutilating or modifying any natural part of it leading to the full or partial loss of its functions’ punishable …
The RightOn webinar earlier this week brought together experts to discuss the use of technologies to facilitate contact tracing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and asked whether such approaches represented a risk to the right to privacy. A diverse range of perspectives on human rights law – including those of civil society, computer science, academia and the telecommunications industry – informed …
Yesterday, beneath the radar of most diplomats at the UN, Facebook launched what is, in effect, a global first: a private sector-led human rights ‘Treaty Body’ designed to monitor its own compliance with international human rights standards. Specifically, the tech giant’s new ‘Oversight Board’ will review Facebook’s decisions about what content to ‘take down’ (because, for example, it constitutes ‘hate …
The COVID-19 pandemic will inflict cataclysmic suffering throughout the world, with sweeping implications for human rights in global health. As human rights analysis has begun to assess the wide-ranging infringements of human rights amidst this unprecedented pandemic response, it will also be necessary to consider the implications of this response for the realization of the human right to the enjoyment …
A finales de abril, el Secretario General de la ONU, Antonio Guterres, lanzó un nuevo y relevante informe en el que pedía que se coloquen los derechos humanos en primer lugar en la conducción de la respuesta de la comunidad internacional a y a la recuperación de la pandemia de COVID-19. El informe, titulado “Todos estamos juntos en eso: los derechos humanos y la …
At the end of April UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched an important new report calling for human rights to be placed upfront in guiding the international community’s response to and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The report, entitled ‘We are all in this together: human rights and COVID-19 response and recovery,’ pushes the key message that human rights are critical, not just …
El seminario web Right On del último miércoles consistió en un análisis de expertos sobre la democracia y el Estado de Derecho en el contexto de la pandemia de COVID-19. Hacia el final de una discusión muy atractiva, se invitó a la audiencia a participar en una encuesta. Introducida como una pregunta del “abogado del diablo”, se les preguntó: ¿son los regímenes …
