Suspension of Human Rights Commitments of States in Necessity: Covid-19 Crisis

Abstract

According to the international human rights system, human beings have an inherent right to enjoy human rights. In the meantime, although governments are obliged to fully comply with them, those rights are linked to life and survival issues, as well as the security and stability of the States. However, due to the entanglement of the right to health and public health with other human rights, the use of the suspension to cover the protection of the right to health in the extraordinary state of Corona has made the realization of this fundamental right doubly challenging. Therefore, the intrinsic part of this challenge is the adoption of health measures compatible with human rights. This article, descriptively-analytically, assuming the possibility of suspending human rights in the Corona emergency, seeks to answer the fundamental question of how the realization of the right to health is possible with the suspension of other human rights. At the same time, what measures are needed to reduce the friction between the right to health and other human rights cases? Since human rights provide a framework for balancing individual and societal interests, balancing rights instead of suspending one right for the benefit of another can help resolve this conflict.

Keywords

• the right to health
• balance of rights
• proportionality
• necessity
• international health regulations (2005)