COVID-19 Tag

[Vimbai Mutandwa is a Legal Advisor at the International Commission of Jurists.] In NEF v President of the Republic of Namibia the applicants, the Namibian Employers Federation, challenged the legality of aspects of lockdown measures taken by the government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Court’s decision is of interest and importance because it upholds the principle of legality and the rule of law by requiring...

[Mandipa Machacha is a Feminist Human Rights Practitioner, and a LL.D. student in Human Rights Law at the University of Pretoria Centre for Human Rights.] Despite extensive protection of the right to education in international and regional human rights instruments, even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, both globally and in Africa, mere access to education was still not guaranteed in practice to all...

[Justice Moses Hungwe Chinhengo is judge of the Lesotho High Court and a Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists.] COVID-19 has altered every aspect of our lives in a very short space of time. As South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has observed, “the world we live in will never be the same”. As we adapt to the “new normal”, it is...

[Justice Jamesina E. L. King is a Commissioner of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) and a Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists. She is also a Justice of the Court of Appeal of Sierra Leone.] The Constitutive Act of the African Union records in its preamble the determination of Member States to “take up the multifaceted challenges that confront our continent...

[Tim Fish Hodgson is a Legal Adviser for the International Commission of Jurists and Tanveer Jeewa is a Communications Consultant for the International Commission of Jurists.] This week Opinio Juris is hosting an online symposium on the impact of COVID-19 on human rights in Africa. Coordinated by the International Commission of Jurists’ Africa Team, the symposium hones in some key issues arising out of...

[Sara De Vido is Associate Professor of International Law at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy; affiliate to the Manchester International Law Centre, UK.] There is an emergency spreading around the world and its name is not COVID-19. It is rather what can be called “gender crisis”, which has been determined, on the one hand, by the increasing opposition to the adoption of norms aimed at the...

[Tetevi Davi is a regional correspondent at Oxford Human Rights Hub and future pupil barrister in London. He is currently advising individuals and organisations bringing human rights and other claims before various judicial and quasi-judicial bodies, is involved in transitional justice processes and is a public international law rapporteur for Oxford International Organizations.] On 9 July 2020, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AfCHPR),...

Virtual Panel Discussion on International Institutions and COVID-19: A Third World Perspective The Centre for International Legal Studies at OP Jindal Global Law School is conducting a series of event titled International Law, Political Economy and Covid-19. The second event of the series is a zoom panel discussion on "Can We Reimagine International Institutions? A Third World Perspective" on 25 July 2020 from 3:30 -...

Maha Abdallah is an International Advocacy Officer at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies; Vito Todeschini is an Associate Legal Adviser at the International Commission of Jurists] States must respect, protect and fulfil the right to health at all times, without discrimination based on race, colour, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation, disability, age, nationality, marital and family status, language, religion, political...

Last week, The Huffington Post published an article with the provocative title, Epidemiologist Slams U.S. Coronavirus Response: ‘Close To Genocide By Default’. The epidemiologist in question was Prof. Dr. Gregg Gonsalves, PhD (Public Health, Yale University), who, according to his online curriculum vitae, is an Assistant Professor in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health, as well as an Associate...

Boram Jang  is a Legal Adviser on Access to Justice for Women at the International Commission of Jurists, Asia & the Pacific Programme, and Khanyo Farisè is a Legal Adviser at the International Commission of Jurists, Africa Programme. Countries across the globe have made various efforts to suppress transmission of COVID-19 and to mitigate its socio-economic impacts. This unprecedented crisis unfolds in the...

[Matiangai Sirleaf is a Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Her expertise includes public international law, global public health law and international human rights law.] Part I of this post details how European powers enacted treaties that prioritized diseases considered most relevant to protecting Western colonial interests. It helps to elucidate how the racialization of diseases...