Protecting Human Rights and Public Health in Global Pandemics: A Map of the Standards Applied by EU and US Courts

Project Information

THEMIS

Grant agreement ID: 746014

DOI

10.3030/746014

Project closed

EC signature date 21 March 2017

Start date 1 September 2018

End date 1 January 2021

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 195 454,80

EU contribution

€ 195 454,80

Coordinated by

THE QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY OF BELFAST
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - THEMIS (Protecting Human Rights and Public Health in Global Pandemics: A Map of the Standards Applied by EU and US Courts)

Reporting period: 2018-09-01 to 2020-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

When pandemics strike the key problem is: how to ensure that human rights and public health priorities are equally respected? THEMIS addressed this issue through investigation of the role of courts (judicial review) in ensuring human rights-based approaches to pandemics. The project is important for society as it offers new knowledge about normative standards for assessment of human rights guarantees in infectious disease control and epidemics, raises societal awareness about human rights and health, and provides a vital reference for policy-making in responding to global challenges of health threats.
The project started with the following facts and scholarly observations: fuelled by international mobility, risks of epidemic outbreaks are increasing. National and international public health responses to limit the spread of diseases are often characterised by treating health as a sharp security issue, using risk of health threats for political means, and governing by causing societal fears at the expense of the protection of human rights. As a result, the rights of individuals and populations are/can be infringed, as they are often assumed to be obstacles to public health. Possible violations concern the rights to life and personal integrity, freedom of movement, respect for private and family life, and specific patients’ rights. The significance of THEMIS became particularly visible in face of the global Covid-19 pandemic which began in December 2019. The pandemic generated public health restrictions on an unimagined scale and caused huge, human rights-related implications world-wide. It also caused a massive number of rights-based claims and litigation. In reaction, and prescient, to these developments, the project examined case-law because judges are often both the first to be approached by those seeking justice and well-placed to stand up to government actions.
THEMIS’s core objective was to develop the first map of the standards of review applied by courts in EU and US when resolving conflicts involving individual human rights and public health protection in global pandemics. In order to establish how judges approach these conflicts, the project’s scholarly objectives were: to discover what is the role of risk, public health, epidemiology and gender in EU/US judicial reasoning, and compare how courts construe lawful human rights limitations. These findings will be presented in a book manuscript resulting from this project. In terms of social and policy engagement, where the impact of the project can be located, the aims of the project were: to discuss the significance of judicial standards in pandemic preparedness with experts and foster the inter-disciplinary, cross-sectoral and transatlantic debates; to convey knowledge of the human rights role in fair pandemic preparedness to targeted lay public.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The work of the project unfolded in several streams, including: extensive comparative research into EU and US case-law; its appraisal in light of the broader literature reviewed and training of the researcher in understanding of non-legal concepts; transferring the knowledge from interpretive fieldwork into the scholarly analysis following the independent research visit to the World Health Organisation and interviews with pandemic preparedness officials in Northern Ireland/UK; and organisation of events to communicate the project results.
The project employed an innovative and successful dissemination strategy designed by the researcher (Lawyers meet Doctors) to bridge together scholars and audiences who usually work separately in law, public health, and human rights. As a result, transdisciplinary collaborations emerged within the hosting institution Queen’s University Belfast between the Health and Human Rights Unit, School of Law and the Centre for the Study of Risk and Inequality and the Centre for Public Health resulting in the co-hosting of the project’s two major international symposia. The project findings were published in English and Polish in leading peer-reviewed journals during the project duration (accessible in open-access repository). The first article explored quarantine ethics and the protection of human rights by judicial and executive authorities in a case-study of US public health measures. The second article discussed the distinctive features and possible problems of electronic systems of information as key tools for EU health crisis management. The third piece exceeding the project plan is a review of a recently- published book on EU risk regulation. To maximise the project impact, the researcher gave ten presentations at international conferences and research seminars in six countries (NI/UK, Republic of Ireland, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, and the US). The project’s communication design used visual arts to teach children about their right to health and patients’ rights through the organisation of a poster contest and open meetings for parents at primary schools in Belfast.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project generated new knowledge on the role of courts and law in fair pandemic control, and thus responded directly to global health challenges. The most significant progress beyond the state of art includes innovation in geographical and subject-matter scope of the case-law search as well as conceptual categorisation and appraisal of comparative judicial standards of review (in the EU and the US). The novel approach of the project – based on transdisciplinary linking of risk regulation, public health, and the human rights law field – instigated inter-sectoral (policy-academia) and transatlantic (EU-US) discourses, and brought awareness about the growing need for more inter-disciplinary education (law-human rights-public health). The project also provided an example of good practice with respect to how bringing together members of societal communities (parents, teachers, and children) with local doctors can increase understanding of human rights in health and decrease societal fears that work against public health. This impact will certainly continue well beyond the project time-frame.
The impact of the project was also visibly achieved thanks to successful organisation of two international workshops well-attended by academics, students, early career researchers and practitioners (e.g. from the World Health Organisation, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, NI Executive Department of Health, the UK Nuffield Council of Bioethics, the General Court, Court of Justice of the EU); and through a range of presentations and publications. Some of the papers from the THEMIS international Symposium are expected to be published in the special section in the German Law Journal. Two further articles by the researcher will be submitted in March 2021, including one on the significance of judicial standards for the WHO in addressing vaccine hesitancy, resulting from a collaboration after the researcher’s presentation at an international conference in Heidelberg.
As THEMIS offers knowledge about practical application of human rights assessment of public health measures in pandemics, its long term impact is expected in exploitation of research findings by policy officials and judges at the national, international, and EU level as well as by individual citizens.

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