A. The rule of law and human rights at the centre of recovery Since the beginning of the pandemic, the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean have
adopted various types of measures —most of them emanating from the executive branch— such as the following: the closure and conditional reopening of air, land, sea and river borders; declaration of a health emergency or state of emergency owing to disaster; restrictions and bans on the movement of people (preventive and mandatory quarantines); curfews; restrictions on the right to freedom of movement, the right of assembly and the right to education owing to the suspension of educational activities, virtual classes and gradual reopening; physical distancing; teleworking and internal borders or cordons sanitaires.4 In the economic sphere, the governments have also adopted measures to support supply, such as low and even zero interest rate loans to provide liquidity to companies, financing aimed at micro, small and mediumsized enterprises (MSMEs), and advisory services, training or other tools to reactivate these businesses. In addition, policies have been implemented to secure the income of wage earners or to provide subsidies and unemployment insurance, among other demand-side measures.
Parliaments have played an important role in this process, as bills and resources have had to
be introduced and approved to implement these measures; for example, specific labour laws which temporarily relax contractual relationships in the private sector to safeguard employment, protect unemployed or underemployed workers in the formal and informal sectors, and regularize teleworking. Legislation has also been passed to provide exceptional economic support to vulnerable segments of the population, to create food programmes, and to support MSMEs by providing tax relief and adopting other measures to promote economic reactivation.
Parliaments are playing the fundamental role of monitoring the performance of the executive
branch through virtual meetings with ministers to follow up sectoral measures and newly-created virtual emergency and reactivation committees. For example, in Guatemala, presidential committees on social, citizen, health and environmental protection and on security and justice were created to oversee the measures taken by the executive. In Jamaica, the House of Representatives established a Special Select Committee on Public Health (COVID-19).
Over the past months, both regionally and internationally, questions have been raised about
some institutional responses to the crisis in terms of respect for human rights (IACHR, 2020; OHCHR, 2020b). Concerns have been voiced that the exceptional measures taken in this health emergency could become permanent, incorporated into the “new normal”, or used to allow certain political and social groups to amass power to the detriment of others.
Other measures have given rise to concerns that certain fundamental rights may be restricted,
such as the right to freedom of movement, the right to protest, the right of assembly or the right to privacy. In some cases, concerns have been raised about military institutions possibly taking an active role in the political arena or the remilitarization of some of the region’s democracies. Fears have also been expressed about the adoption of laws exempting military and police forces from criminal liability if they use their weapons in self-defence during a state of emergency declared to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
There is also concern about the oversight or neglect of certain vulnerable groups and their agendas,
which, with much effort, had carved out a space in various societies. These include the agendas relating to gender, indigenous peoples, Afrodescendants and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) persons, among others, in addition to the environmental agenda.
There are concerns, as well, about future uses of camera-based facial recognition tools and the
use of body temperature data, which are measures designed to track individuals for the purpose of tracing possible infections. The use of these technologies, particularly artificial intelligence and big data, to enforce emergency and security restrictions, or to monitor and follow up on affected populations, raises concerns in particular that these measures will remain in effect after the COVID-19 emergency is over. All measures should be timebound and justified by
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The measures taken are in keeping with the duty of States to respect, protect and uphold human rights in times of crisis; in particular, the rights to life, health and security, which are guaranteed in most constitutions of the countries of the region. The main international and regional human rights instruments recognize that it may be necessary to limit the exercise of some rights in case of a national emergency. However, regardless of the magnitude of the emergency, some rights are non-derogable in all circumstances; namely, the right to life, the right not to be subjected to torture and abuse, and the right not to be arbitrarily detained. Therefore, restrictions on some rights during the pandemic should be necessary, proportionate to the objective, for a limited time and non-discriminatory.
