COVID-19 is a Human Rights Crisis — Book Review
The current Coronavirus pandemic is not only a public health emergency, but a human rights issue that must be addressed through global cooperation.
COVID-19 has, in a matter of months, affected the health and wellbeing, livelihoods, and freedoms of billions of people around the world. Upwards of one-third of the global population is, or has been, under some form of lockdown or government-imposed restrictions. As Eamon Gilmore, the European Union’s Special Representative for Human Rights has remarked, ‘Never before has the entire population of the world shared such a need to work together in the common interest of all.’
While it is tempting to view this crisis narrowly, through only the lens of public health, we must take a wide-angle view and acknowledge that ‘the common interest of all’ must include a global cooperative approach to addressing all human rights. Of course, safeguarding the rights to adequate medical care, public information, food and safe drinking water, and sanitary living conditions is of paramount importance. But so too is ensuring that at risk and marginalized groups, including those living in poverty, ethnic and religious minorities, people with disabilities, migrants, refugees, the elderly, women, children, and LGBT people are protected. As Akshaya Kumar, crisis advocate at Human Right Watch has noted, ‘Policies to respond to the crisis should recognize that our communities are only as healthy as the most vulnerable among us’, and that ‘COVID-19 presents…an opportunity to address long-simmering human rights concerns.’
With this in mind, now is perhaps a perfect time to reflect upon how human rights have developed and been realized around the world, and the institutions and organizations that have enabled this progress. Two books in particular, provide an excellent introduction to this topic.
The United Nations and Human Rights: a guide for a new era
In this excellent text, Julie A. Mertus aims to deliver practical, introductory guidance for both students and human rights practitioners in navigating the United Nations human rights system. In this, Mertus succeeds by delivering a comprehensive and original text that deftly avoids becoming mired in overwhelming technical detail.
In contrast to many other introductory texts tackling the UN human rights system, Mertus takes a highly expansive view of recent developments in UN human rights practices. While at times this can feel as though we are glossing over important historical context, Mertus’s relentless focus on the present is powerful in drawing her readers’ attention to an increasingly diverse and important set of actors and institutions, as the UN human rights system shifts focus from standards-setting towards real implementation and enforcement.
This is highlighted early on through the in-depth treatment given to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), reflecting its growing importance as ‘the focal point for all UN human rights activities.’ Dedicated chapters on the Security Council and International Labour Organization (ILO) are also of tremendous value, illustrating how human rights practice has expanded well beyond the dedicated UN human rights bodies, and is now incorporated within almost every UN agency and institution. Of interest, too, is Mertus’ inter-weaving of the role of NGO’s throughout all chapters of the book, demonstrating in form how NGO’s have increasingly gained in influence across all aspects the UN human rights system.
While at times critical of the politicization of human rights within the UN, we are never invited into a robust discussion of the role which politics has played in the development of international human rights norms, and why these norms have developed as they have. While some nuance is lost, it is difficult to be overly critical, as interrogation of such issues was deliberately avoided in favour of providing functional, procedural information. On the whole, it is impossible not to commend such a self-consciously practical guide to navigating the UN human rights system in a field that can at times seem overwhelmingly political and abstract.
Global Human Rights Institutions: between remedy and ritual
Taking a far more tightly structured approached, Gert Oberleitner sets out to explore the benefits and dangers of the institutionalization of human rights, and the impact this has had on their development, implementation, enforcement, and promotion around the world. As an explicitly introductory-level text, Oberleitner certainly achieves his aim of providing readers with an accessible entry-point towards understanding the complex system of global human rights institutions. Readers are astutely shepherded through the basic theoretical underpinnings of the institutionalization of human rights, to the history and development of dedicated human rights institutions, to the realization of human rights through the UN’s policy of ‘mainstreaming’, and finally onto dedicated and insightful chapters on world courts and NGO’s.
Profoundly pragmatic (although he denies applying a realist outlook), Oberleitner acknowledges and engages with the many compromises, challenges, and failings inherent within the highly political international state system. No punches are pulled, and criticism is doled out where due. The ‘political games’ played within the old Commission for Human Right come under close scrutiny, as does the Security Council’s history of wavering on human rights. Yet, we are never bogged down in normative debates of what ought to be. Rather, we are asked to accept the system for what it is. The politics and compromises at play, while often problematic, are ultimately the very same factors that have allowed for the development of international human rights in the first place. The focus throughout, then, is on the many positive outcomes that can be achieved through the institutionalization of human rights — ‘after all, the road from vision to reality is called pragmatism’.
Both authors strive, ultimately, towards the same goal; that is, constructing an introductory text that both describes and analyses the institutionalization of human rights. Yet, readers are likely to form slightly different perspectives due to the contrasting approaches taken. From The United Nations and Human Rights: a guide for a new era, one is left with an in-depth procedural understanding of how various UN institutions currently function in order to realize human rights on the ground. Such practical understanding is immensely important, and often underappreciated and underrepresented in academic scholarship. Global Human Rights Institutions: between remedy and ritual, largely forgoes the procedural, but is able to imbue the reader with an appreciable understanding of what these institutions are, and why the institutionalization of human rights matters in enabling implementation and enforcement.
When taken as complimentary readings, one is left with a greater understanding of international human rights institutions in theory and in practice, and how they have enabled the development and realization of human rights around the world.
