Individual Rights And Infectious Disease

ANSWERS

Human rights law has become increasingly important in shaping national health policy and global health governance. Human rights law provides universal frameworks for advancing justice in public health by codifying international standards to frame government obligations and facilitate accountability for achieving the highest attainable level of health. Health-related human rights have evolved dramatically to provide a normative framework for public health, addressing threats to individual dignity as “rights violations” under international law.

Human rights law has become increasingly important in shaping national health policy and global health governance. Human rights law provides universal frameworks for advancing justice in public health by codifying international standards to frame government obligations and facilitate accountability for achieving the highest attainable level of health. Health-related human rights have evolved dramatically to provide a normative framework for public health, addressing threats to individual dignity as “rights violations” under international law. However, from the recent Ebola epidemics in Sub-Saharan Africa to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that threatens the world, public health laws violate individual bodily integrity through vaccination and treatment mandates, individual medical privacy through surveillance and reporting, and individual liberty through quarantine and isolation. This chapter investigates the application of human rights law in infectious disease control, focusing on rights-based approaches to preventing, detecting, and responding to infectious disease outbreaks.

 

Part I provides an overview of the theoretical framework for health and human rights and descriptions of ongoing efforts to balance individual rights protections with government public health practices. Whereas human rights had long been overlooked in international health debates, early government responses to the HIV/AIDS pandemic catalyzed human rights as a foundation for public health, with advocates emphasizing human rights as “inextricably linked” to public health efforts. Policymakers sought to implement human rights law in public health policy during the early AIDS response, viewing discrimination as counterproductive to public health goals, abandoning coercive tools of public health practice, and applying human rights to focus on individual risk behaviors leading to HIV transmission. Moving away from individual rights and toward public health as a human right, these human rights claims have sought to address underlying population-level health determinants in a rapidly globalizing world.

 

Part II investigates how these health-related human rights have been applied to realize non-discrimination and equality; autonomy, bodily integrity, informed consent; participation; and the right to health. By recognizing an inextricable link between public health and human rights, the health and human rights movement may be able to shift away from its initial focus on conflicts between public health practice and individual human rights and instead use human rights promotion to advance public health goals. On the other hand, infectious disease control efforts continue to call into question the notion that individual rights are always the best approach to supporting population health, with recent responses to Ebola and COVID-19 relying on national policies that unnecessarily limit individual rights in order to protect public health. The human rights violations caused by these egregious national policies highlight the ongoing need for rights-based global health governance to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious diseases.

 

Part III examines how global health law has framed this balance between public health and human rights in the new millennium and how infectious disease imperatives for public health have been balanced with individual dignity protections in human rights. International law has long been regarded as essential to the international cooperation required to address the global threat of infectious disease, but human rights were never addressed under global health law until the International Health Regulations were revised in 2005. For the first time, the 2005 revision explicitly looked to human rights as a foundation for respecting human dignity and bodily integrity across states in implementing infectious disease control measures nationally. Despite the recent promise of universal human rights in global health governance, the Global Health Security Agenda for 2014 reverts to the securitization of public health to frame national efforts to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious diseases. As nations resort to extreme human rights violations in their emergency responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, abandoning global solidarity and international law, it remains unclear how human rights law will be implemented through global health governance to support the future of infectious disease control.

This chapter concludes that, while the rights-based approach to infectious disease control has evolved—under human rights law, as applied to national policy, and in the development of global health governance—there has been little assessment of how these approaches either realize or violate human rights in the pursuit of public health. This chapter proposes human rights monitoring of infectious disease control as a basis for accountability for implementing international human rights under the global health law, calling for a human rights research agenda to assess infectious disease control policies, programs, and practices throughout infectious disease responses.
Individual rights often conflict with state responsibilities to protect the public’s health, whereas human rights protect the individual. In order to ensure that societies can be healthy, public health frequently includes government intervention to limit individual rights to protect the general welfare. Policymakers have long struggled with the appropriate balance between individual rights protection and public health promotion in this conflict between collective benefit and individual restrictions. World War II demonstrated the horrors that could occur under the guise of public health, and human rights would be codified under the post-war United Nations (UN) as a means to prevent public health authorities from violating individual human rights. As a result of the UN’s development of human rights law to protect individuals from public health practices, scholars and practitioners in the 1980s came to recognize the “inextricable linkages” between public health and human rights, examining how the public health lens and human rights paradigm can complement each other in preventing disease and promoting health.

QUESTION

Individual Rights And Infectious Disease

Should individual rights be compromised to control the spread of communicable diseases for the good of society?