The UK authorities’s introduction of latest restrictions to take care of the “omicron emergency” has prompted backlash from some politicians. When the modifications have been put to the Home of Commons, greater than 100 Tory MPs voted towards the plans. A number of expressed concern over the influence measures comparable to having to point out proof of vaccination to enter sure venues would have on individuals’s “civil liberties”. They’ve basically been invoking human rights arguments to oppose pandemic emergency powers. Nevertheless, their opposition relies on a misguided and libertarian understanding of the character of human rights.
Such libertarian opposition to the brand new restrictions may be seen from some MPs’ current commentary. Conservative MP Steve Baker, who’s within the Covid Restoration Group and a vocal backbencher, accused Prime Minister Boris Johnson of making a “depressing dystopia” by bringing again guidelines on face masks and testing and introducing vaccine passes.
Libertarians basically argue that human rights forestall the state from performing or interfering along with your freedom. Any interference to which you don’t consent is an act of aggression and is due to this fact illegitimate. In my e-book Emergency Powers in a Time of Pandemic, I argue that libertarian understandings of rights as solely proscribing the facility of the state are inappropriate for coping with a pandemic.
On the face of it, human rights comparable to these within the European Conference on Human Rights and integrated into British legislation by the Human Rights Act 1998 seem to require non-intervention by the state. Everybody has the best to life, all people has the best to liberty, all people has the best to privateness, all people has the best to freedom of expression. Basically, the state ought to simply depart individuals alone.
A pandemic, nevertheless, truly requires states to be extra lively, taking constructive steps to guard human rights.
For instance, the best to life enshrined in Article 2 of the European Conference on Human Rights doesn’t merely require states to chorus from taking individuals’s lives, it additionally requires states to guard individuals from “actual and instant dangers”. Likewise, the state should spend sources and implement measures to make sure that situations in state-run establishments (like hospitals and prisons) don’t deteriorate to the extent that they infringe on individuals’s rights to humane therapy.
If MPs actually wish to shield individuals’s rights, they need to be in favour of a strong pandemic response. An individual can not train their different rights if their proper to life will not be protected. A human rights legislation limiting the state’s skill to guard individuals from a lethal risk wouldn’t be of a lot worth. Somewhat than conceiving of human rights legislation as merely stipulating non-intervention by a state, the important thing to the success of the human rights motion is its skill empower or “emancipate” individuals. This locations sturdy obligations on states to guard and vindicate individuals’s rights.
Whose rights matter?
On the time of the vote, over 800 individuals had died throughout the previous seven days from COVID-19. Whereas these numbers seem comparatively low compared with the peak of the pandemic, they’re considerably greater than the deaths attributable to different threats which have prompted the British state to enact draconian powers. From April 2003 to March 2020, for instance, 95 individuals have been killed in terrorist-related incidents in England and Wales.
It’s placing that, whereas they’re opposing new COVID-19 restrictions on a civil liberties foundation, MPs are reluctant to voice considerations over different laws that clearly infringes on human rights. On the exact same day because the vote, the federal government proposed placing modifications to the 1998 Human Rights Act, together with proscribing the best to household life to make it simpler to deport individuals.
Conservative MPs additionally lately voted by way of laws permitting the house secretary to strip individuals of their British citizenship with out discover, and considerably curbing the best of individuals to protest —- a basic proper in any democracy.
At finest, that is inconsistency. At worst, it’s rank hypocrisy.
The explanation for this may be boiled right down to an “us v. them” mindset. In the end, it’s the concept most of “us” – “bizarre”, law-abiding individuals – will really feel that counterterrorist powers don’t have an effect on us, or that we ourselves will not be prone to being deported. As an alternative, we view these sorts of human rights restrictions as solely impacting the rights of the “different” -— the terrorist, the undeserving. In distinction, the consequences of COVID emergency powers apply to everybody.
Whereas this distinction explains opposition to some rights restrictions however not others, it can not justify this inconsistency. This concept of these deserving versus these undeserving of civil liberties has no place in human rights. We’ve got rights by advantage of the truth that we’re human, not just because we’re good residents.
Alan Greene doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or organisation that might profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their educational appointment.
