Pandemics and the future of rights mobilisation

Abstract

As COVID-19 continues its relentless circuit through our lives, international actors, states, civil society advocates, and individuals are being confronted with unhappy choices on derogations from and limitations to rights. Concerns are also being raised about the potential misappropriation of rights discourses to impede legitimate measures aimed at reigning in the human impact of the pandemic. One element largely missing from the conversation is the small, but encouraging, groups of individuals who have been able to secure rights victories that would previously have been considered out of reach. In an Essay on Pandemics as Rights-Generators published as part of an Agora on Covid-19 in the American Journal of International Law, I focus on one such particularly vulnerable category of people: prisoners. I outline three rights-framing strategies that explain the gains made in rights seeking for prisoners in an age of pandemics, and that might hold enduring lessons for human rights advocates, scholars, and institutions.