Africa Human Rights And The Covid 19 Pandemic Mitigation Dynamics And Their Implications For Human Rights Freedoms And Civ

This book makes a significant contribution by initiating debate on the state of human rights, freedoms and civil liberties in the context of emergencies such as pandemics in general and Covid-19 in particular. It is without doubt that as the world was preoccupied with combating the Covid-19 pandemic, issues of rights, freedoms and liberties in the context of this struggle increasingly came under close scrutiny. The book is for students and practitioners across fields, but most especially in history, law, political science, development studies, philosophy, social anthropology and sociology.

This book makes a significant contribution by initiating debate on the state of human rights, freedoms and civil liberties in the context of emergencies such as pandemics in general and Covid-19 in particular. It is without doubt that as the world was preoccupied with combating the Covid-19 pandemic, issues of rights, freedoms and liberties in the context of this struggle increasingly came under close scrutiny. In many African countries, there were concerns about Covid-19 containment measures being enforced brutally by state security operatives such as the army, the police and the intelligence officers. Considerable debate also arose on whether the infringements that took place in an effort to thwart the pandemic were justifiable on health and moral grounds. The book makes an important claim that the fight against Covid-19 was marred by the abuse of power by many ruling elites who weaponised and repurposed pandemic curtailment provisions to taper democratic space by solidifying autocracy through muzzling political opponents, gagging the press and instituting various socio-political control mechanisms beyond public health concerns. In addition, cases abound of Covid-19 containment protocols being instrumentalised to subvert electoral processes, scuttle popular protests and extinguish opposition political activity. Undoubtedly, this book illustrates that the global struggle against Covid-19 was also very much a war for the respect of basic freedoms, human rights and civil liberties, thereby highlighting the need to establish a sustainable interaction between pandemic dynamics and human rights. The book is for students and practitioners across fields, but most especially in history, law, political science, development studies, philosophy, social anthropology and sociology.

This book explores the resilience of constitutional government in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, connecting and comparing perspectives from ten countries in sub-Saharan Africa to global trends. In emergency situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, a state has the right and duty under both international law and domestic constitutional law to take appropriate steps to protect the health and security of its population. Emergency regimes may allow for the suspension or limitation of normal constitutional government and even human rights. Those measures are not a license for authoritarian rule, but they must conform to legal standards of necessity, reasonableness, and proportionality that limit state action in ways appropriate to the maintenance of the rule of law in the context of a public health emergency. Bringing together established and emerging African scholars from ten countries, this book looks at the impact government emergency responses to the pandemic have on the functions of the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary, as well as the protection of human rights. It also considers whether and to what extent government emergency responses were consistent with international human rights law, in particular with the standards of legality, necessity, proportionality, and non-discrimination in the Siracusa Principles.

The book, Conformity of COVID-19 responses in Africa through the prism of international human rights law, provides useful insights into the subject-matter of COVID-19 from African perspectives on international law, human rights and democracy through detailed analyses of data, instruments, documents and events connected with the pandemic. The cutting-edge analyses by the contributors help to provide useful information on the human rights preparedness of African states to deal with pandemics, the limitations or restrictions imposed on human rights by African governments and the violations of human rights that took place during the pandemic; and whether the continent has learnt any useful lessons based on past experiences.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

The Covid-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020. It had initially spread in Wuhan, China in late 2019, before the first cases outside the country were recorded at the beginning of 2020. Today there are millions of cases of Covid-19 globally, with thousands of new cases being confirmed every day. The Covid-19 pandemic is, at root, a public health emergency, driven by its ready transmission and ability to cause severe illness and death. But while its ability to overwhelm the best of health systems has already been demonstrated, its far-reaching social, economic and political consequences are still unfolding. Although everyone is at risk of the virus, some groups have been worse affected by the pandemic and its consequences, including in particular minorities and indigenous peoples. Especially in the global north, mounting evidence has shown that ethnic, racial and religious minorities are not only at greater risk of contracting the virus for a wide range of reasons – from their disproportionate employment in high-risk sectors such as nursing, cleaning and public transport to their concentration in overcrowded housing where social distancing is more difficult – but can also face higher rates of mortality once infected, often due to limited access to medical care. Linguistic minorities may face problems in accessing accurate public health advice. While there is so far less data available on the impact of the pandemic on indigenous peoples, particularly smaller or more isolated communities, emerging evidence from the US and elsewhere suggests that the implications of the pandemic have been ‘disproportionately devastating’ for indigenous peoples.

This book examines the legal and security threat posed by pandemics in Africa and beyond. The authors propose that to effectively counter pandemics, it is necessary for states to transcend beyond a realism approach and to adopt security policies that reflect the multidimensional nature of state authority and functions.

COVID-19 has become one of the most severe issues dominating discussions on the agendas of states globally, and across the African continent, since its emergence in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic has regrettably brought into sharp focus the continued multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination faced by women and girls in Africa because of their intersecting identities. Yet, paradoxically, although African women are disproportionately affected by the crisis, they are largely invisible in the responses. Several African states and governments have taken different policy measures in response to the pandemic. These responses have taken different dimensions, including shutting down economies, imposition of lockdowns, coercive quarantine measures with police enforcement and criminal consequences for offenders violating these rules. Unfortunately, these responses have reinforced and amplified women’s disproportionate disadvantage and gender inequalities in Africa. Against this backdrop, this book asks the intersectional question about women’s experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa. Applying an intersectional human rights lens involves questioning how the intersecting identities that African women embody affect their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic.