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COVID-19 symposium : to derogate or not to derogate?
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Opinio Juris; 2020; [LAW]
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SCHEININ, Martin, COVID-19 symposium : to derogate or not to derogate?, Opinio Juris, 2020, [LAW] - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/66790
Abstract
Earlier contributors have highlighted that in addition to permissible restrictions (or limitations) upon human rights, applicable in perfectly normal situations, some human rights treaties also allow for the more far-reaching option of a State to derogate from some of its obligations during a situation of grave crisis. This applies to the subset of other than so-called non-derogable rights under the UN-level International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, see article 4) and two of the regional human rights treaties, the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR, see article 27) and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR, see article 15). Almost twenty States parties to the three treaties mentioned have resorted to derogation during the current COVID-19 epidemic, officially declaring it as a state of emergency threatening the life of the nation and, as a consequence, notifying the United Nations, Organization of American States or Council of Europe about unilaterally derogating from some of their treaty obligations under the three treaties. As of 2 April 2020, they included eight countries derogating from the ECHR (Albania, Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Moldova, North Macedonia and Romania), three of them notably EU Member States, as well as no less than ten Latin American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Peru) derogating from the ACHR. A subset of six of these States have also notified the UN about derogating from the ICCPR (Armenia, Ecuador, Estonia, Guatemala, Latvia and Romania). The mere number of derogations because of COVID-19 – almost one out of every ten countries in the world – is unprecedented.
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Published online on April 6, 2020