Human rights in pandemics: criminal and punitive approaches to COVID-19.

In the early years of the HIV epidemic, many countries passed laws criminalising HIV non-disclosure, exposure and/or transmission. These responses, intended to limit transmission and punish those viewed as 'irresponsible', have since been found to undermine effective HIV responses by driving people away from diagnosis and increasing stigma towards those living with HIV. With the emergence of COVID-19, human rights and public health advocates raised concerns that countries might again respond with criminal and punitive approaches. To assess the degree to which countries adopted such strategies, 51 English-language emergency orders from 39 countries, representing seven world regions, were selected from the COVID-19 Law Lab, a database of COVID-19 related laws from over 190 countries. Emergency orders were reviewed to assess the type of restrictions identified, enforcement mechanisms and compliance with principles outlined in the Siracusa Principles on the Limitation and Derogation Provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, including legality, legitimate aim, proportionality, non-discrimination, limited duration and subject to review. Approximately half of all orders examined included criminal sanctions related to violations of lockdowns. Few orders fully complied with the legal requirements for the limitation of, or derogation from, human rights obligations in public health emergencies. In future pandemics, policymakers should carefully assess the need for criminal and punitive responses and ensure that emergency orders comply with countries' human rights obligations.

Advancing rights for women: the role of litigation.

Litigation is becoming an increasingly attractive advocacy tool for human rights movements around the world. It has served as an effective strategy not only for reforming or enforcing laws that deny or protect basic human rights, but also for raising awareness of and mobilizing support for human rights issues. In this article, which is based on a presentation at a symposium session at the conference, Luisa Cabal focuses on a specific area within the realm of women's health and rights--the rights of HIV-positive women and girls, and in particular, violations they experience vis-à-vis access to health care--and discusses the potential for litigation to help raise awareness and advance efforts to protect and promote human rights in this area.

Striking a balance: conscientious objection and reproductive health care from the Colombian perspective.

Conscientious Objection or conscientious refusal (CO) in access to reproductive health care is at the center of current legal debates worldwide. In countries such as the US and the UK, constitutional dilemmas surrounding CO in the context of reproductive health services reveal inadequate policy frameworks for balancing CO rights with women's rights to access contraception and abortion. The Colombian Constitutional Court's holistic jurisprudence regarding CO standards has applied international human rights norms so as to not only protect women's reproductive rights as fundamental rights, but to also introduce clear limits for the exercise of CO in health care settings. This paper reviews Latin American lines of regulation in Argentina, Uruguay, and Mexico City to argue that the Colombian Court's jurisprudence offers a strong guidance for future comprehensive policy approaches that aim to effectively balance tensions between CO and women's reproductive rights.