The COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a global challenge to the world community and the whole system of individual and collective human rights, including the rights to life, to personal security, to be free from suffering and discrimination, to fair trial, to due process, freedoms of opinion, expression, assembly, association, and religion and belief, to property, to health, to food, to decent labour, to freedom from poverty, to access information, to education and to development. It also challenges the ability of states and international organizations to work together in the spirit of multilateralism, cooperation and solidarity.
The devastating effects of unilateral sanctions as well as the need for solidarity and full respect for all human rights in the course of the pandemic have been repeatedly proclaimed by the United Nations and other governmental and non-governmental organizations. As the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights noted, the pandemic “is challenging the whole system of human rights, including such fundamental human rights as the right to life”. In a UN policy brief, the Secretary General identified saving lives as the main UN priority in the time of COVID-19. Both of them, and I, have called for curtailing the use of sanctions that undermine the ability of targeted countries to fight the pandemic.