Welcome to HEAL and discussion on the UK Government’s response to COVID-19: how to further realise the right to health Seminar

This seminar will be given by Dr Claire Lougarre, Lecturer in Human Rights Law at the University of Southampton.

To start this academic year, HEAL will introduce attendees to some of the research carried out by its members. Discussions with then focus on a recent submission to Parliament from Dr Claire Lougarre on the response of the UK Government to COVID-19, in the light of its human rights obligations to realise the right to health. This submission was written in collaboration with Judith Bueno de Mesquita (University of Essex), Lisa Montel (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine), and Dr Sharifah Sekalala (University of Warwick); it can be found here.

As the COVID-19 crisis has unfurled worldwide, its catastrophic impact on the right to health has led to an apparent consensus amongst human rights treaty bodies, UN Special Procedures, UN agencies, NGOs and scholars that the right to health should be at the forefront of States’ responses to this crisis. Therefore, it is crucial to understand what this human right means in times of pandemic. Following a review of the UK’s obligations towards the right to health in the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors highlight specific areas of concern in relation to UK’s compliance with these obligations, and formulate key recommendations on how to further realise this right. Considering the current resurgence in COVID-19 cases across the globe and the inherent connection between human rights compliance and global health, this document, drafted in July, has the potential to help policy-makers to learn from past mistakes in order to improve their responses to the COVID-19 crisis, which will be the focus of this discussion. [The authors have since decided to take this project further and are currently writing a paper on States’ obligations to realise the right to health during a pandemic under international law].

 

Please note that all seminars will be online. This semester, HEAL decided to celebrate the research carried out in Southampton Law School with a variety of topics at the interface between health, ethics and law. All welcome!

For more more details, please email: heal@soton.ac.uk