Human Rights and COVID: Reflections on the COVID Inquiry

"Our public services use the language of human rights, but what happened during the pandemic reveals an enduring gap"

Professor Angela O’Hagan, Chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission

Last month, on behalf of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, I was invited to give evidence to the Scottish Covid Inquiry. It was an opportunity to reflect on whether the Government considered human rights in their response to the pandemic - and what lessons have been learned to ensure a human rights based approach now and in the future.

We were there because thousands of people died and thousands more carry the legacy of loss, exclusion, social isolation, and a re-shaped working life. Every one of us was touched by grief, separation, or disruption to our development. A human rights based approach, that recognises us as rights holders and human beings, equal in rights and deserving of dignity in life - and death – could have made a real difference during the pandemic and lockdown.

Our role as Scotland’s National Human Rights Institution was to advise decision makers of their human rights obligations, to ensure any restriction of rights was lawful, necessary, proportionate and time-limited. We should inform and supplement the expertise of the government and duty bearers.

Duty bearers – our public services - often use the language of human rights, but what happened during the pandemic, and importantly, what we see still so often in practice, reveals an enduring gap in the knowledge, skills, and tools to integrate human rights as a way of thinking and doing. The SHRC also made these points in our response to the Scottish Government’s recent consultation process on its proposed Equality and Human Rights Mainstreaming Policy. In our view, mainstreaming must mean that a human rights based approach becomes the way we do things in Scotland, rather than something we do separately.

Human rights are not and should not be remote or separate. They cannot be realised through blanket policies, but begin with acknowledging the humanity of the people we stand beside. They are about the basics of dignity and respect for every individual as an equal. They are about our everyday – our home and family life, our right to life, to non-discrimination, to care and health, our freedoms of expression and assembly, our access to justice and remedy.

We all experienced constraints on our rights during Covid. But we did not and still do not experience those constraints equally. The pandemic brought new human rights concerns, and it exacerbated inequalities that existed long before 2020.

For disabled people, access to care and support was closed off, leaving people isolated without support or dignity. Black and minority ethnic people faced unequal risk and outcomes.

Clinically vulnerable people were locked down and remain locked in. Care workers and healthcare workers faced policy decisions that undermined their safety, while they were applauded in performative displays of sentimentality.

We can’t change the past. We can’t undo the pain of people dying alone with anguished families excluded; of single parents alone with disabled children; of people in care homes making do with calling up through the window at relatives; of disabled adults locked in their homes without basic care; of people in prison custody  locked up 24 hours a day indefinitely. We all have our stories of our own families and experiences. For many – especially disabled people – the impact continues.

We can’t undo these realities, but the state can and must learn from them. The Scottish Human Rights Commission called early and often for an inquiry into the human rights concerns that it saw during the pandemic. Part of a human rights based approach is about access to redress and remedy when things go wrong. This Inquiry is an important step towards that, and it was a solemn privilege to provide evidence to guide the Inquiry to the human rights impacts on the people of Scotland.  We all have a responsibility to act purposefully to embed human rights obligations in future.

Watch Professor O’Hagan’s impact hearing at the Scottish Covid Inquiry