Democracy & Governance

COVID-19 has shown that strengthening innovation and production capacities in the pharmaceutical and medical supply and device industries is essential to pandemic preparedness. In Latin America, universities are playing a key role when facing this ongoing challenge in a context of regional economic hardship.

Human rights crises emerge at the local level. Local governments are now at the forefront of human rights implementation and protection. A human rights-based approach to responding to the inevitable next emergency will depend on the preparedness of local governments.

Emergencies pose challenges to the holding of elections. States’ obligation to protect the life, health and security of their population stands in tension to their obligation to respect the right to political participation and related political freedoms. How do we reconcile these dimensions from a human rights perspective?

The inability of countries to ordinarily hold elections and undertake electioneering is one of the many disruptions brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A number of human rights issues have emerged regarding how African states went about declaring states of emergency and implementing emergency measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed shortcomings that countries are struggling to overcome.

When the UN founding members promoted the entry into force of the Constitution of the World Health Organization in 1948 they declared inequality in the promotion of health and control of communicable diseases a common threat.

Eamon Gilmore, the EU Special Representative for Human Rights, welcomes GC Human Rights Preparedness as innovative, important and essential.

#BuildBackBetter is one of the hashtags from the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It speaks to hope, and to history too.