Global Pandemic, Security and Human Rights: Comparative Explorations of COVID-19 and the Law

This book presents an international and comparative exploration of how the COVID-19 global pandemic has affected and impacted on issues of human rights, security, and law.

Throughout the world, the COVID-19 global pandemic has fundamentally impacted and altered our way of life. As this book sets out, all states have had to contend with similar challenges as well as competing interests and obligations affecting human rights and security. These challenges present very few simple choices but nonetheless carry enormous consequences. Organised into two thematic and distinct yet interrelated parts, first on theoretical and practical challenges for human rights and second on threats to personal, collective, and global security, the book examines how the ability of states to safeguard our fundamental rights and security, broadly defined, has been challenged. Questions about the legality and legal impact of recent responses to COVID-19 will persist for some time. It is often said that global problems require coordinated global solutions, but the various responses to the pandemic by states suggest a notable lack of a consensus amongst the international community.

The book will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of human rights law and security law. It will also appeal to constitutional lawyers, given the nature of law-making and the challenge of ensuring adequate scrutiny in emergency situations as well as the impact of COVID-19 upon the legal framework more generally. It will provide a valuable resource for policymakers, practitioners, and public servants.

Ben Stanford is a Senior Lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University. He is also an Editor for the Asian Yearbook of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Ben was recently appointed as Lay Observer to monitor the welfare and access to justice of people held in court custody. He has previously worked for Rights Watch (UK), Peace Brigades International (UK), and the Human Rights Lawyers Association.

Steve Foster has taught law at Coventry for over 40 years and was Head of Coventry Law School until 2017. He is currently the editor-in-chief of the Coventry Law Journal.

Carlos Espaliú Berdud is Main Researcher of the Research Group on Security, Risks Management, and Conflicts at the University of Nebrija and is Full Professor. He has been Lecturer in the University of Navarre, Legal Officer of the International Court of Justice, Ramón y Cajal Researcher in the University of Córdoba, Associate Professor in Public International Law and European Union Law, and Director of the Charlemagne Institute of European Studies and Vice-Dean for Academic Affairs at the Faculty of Law at the International University of Catalonia (UIC).