Is Human Rights Prepared? Risk, Rights and Public Health Emergencies

Abstract

Consider, for example, the proliferation of references to 'preparedness'; specifically, 'public health emergency preparedness' and its more specialised variants such as 'public health emergency legal preparedness' and 'international legal preparedness'. There is also increasing use of related phrases such as 'global public health security' and 'international health security'. Of course, a proliferation of terms is not enough to prove that a new force is in play: language shifts all the time in all sorts of areas, and although such changes may reflect and contribute to deep social transformation, they can also be nothing more than passing fashions with little or no impact. But public health emergency preparedness does not feel like a superficial, short-lived trend: in fact, it seems almost the exact opposite. Indeed, as David Fidler and Laurence Gostin emphasise in their recent book, Biosecurity in the Global Age, a 'policy revolution' seems to have taken place -a revolution brought about by a 'collision' of public health and security. 1 The collision of security and public health is our focus in this article. But before explaining why, we need to define 'public health emergency preparedness', in particular its impressive-sounding correlate, 'global public health security', and its less readily comprehensible subset, 'public health emergency legal preparedness'. In the World Health Report 2007, Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), described 'global public health security' as 'the reduced vulnerability of populations to acute threats to health'. 2 Later in the same report, more detailed definitions were provided:

Viral surveillance: Governing social isolation in São Paulo, Brazil, during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…As Foucault (2015) , Murphy and Whitty (2009) , Elbe (2011) , and others have shown this heterogeneous apparatus is hardly an exception. The birth of modern medicine in the 19th century already encompassed articulations between police, sanitary and demographic registries, and statistics.…”

“…They elude the traditional democratic decision-making process. Thus, an epidemic outbreak should be met with legal preparedness for a public health emergency, which “is all about having the right laws in place and then using them in the right way in a time of public health emergency (...) it is both proactive and reactive” ( Murphy and Whitty, 2009 , p. 220). Which means that, in the context of a pandemic like COVID-19, which spreads rapidly, legal measures, safeguards, and civil society itself may not have been adequately mobilized to observe these systems and ensure their use in a competent and organized manner.…”

Right engineering? The redesign of privacy and personal data protection

“…The association of personal data protection with the 'risk to an asset' corresponds to a conception of 'rights as risks' for an organization that have to be managed (Murphy and Whitty 2009;van Dijk, Gellert and Rommetveit 2016). On this conception, human rights become economic resources that can be controlled through risk management and design in order to produce value, or in this case, used to prevent damage to the company.…”

Review Paper: Pandemic Preparedness in Asia: A Role for Law and Ethics?

“…Despite recognition of the need for pandemic planning to be culturally appropriate and suitable for local conditions (such as the cultural expectations of health care workers 26 ), the English language literature in Asia generally does not often address pandemic preparedness from Asian cultural or religious perspectives, but there is a good body of emerging literature on ethical and legal aspects. Meta-level studies of the cultural constituents of media or other public constructions framing pandemics as battles, 42 risks, 43 threats to "security," [44][45][46][47][48] precautionary action, 49 or as public health preparedness, 50 stand in contrast to the small number of microlevel studies such as those regarding rural, decentralized Indonesia. [51][52][53] Further dialogue and research to strengthen this aspect of regional preparedness would appear warranted in this region, as it is globally, in light of evidence that religious and other community values may shape public acceptance of social distancing measures, 54,55 the use of quarantine as a public health tool 56 or may differentially influence the precautionary measures taken by the public.…”