The state of human rights in a (post) COVID-19 world

Abstract As the pandemic spread globally, there was an explosion of scholarship written on the effects the pandemic had in numerous fields. Human rights scholars were no exception to this trend and sought to identify the effects of the pandemic on many related factors, including on gender violence, freedom of movement, protests, health care, and repression. Scholarship of this type, written in real time and responsive to the rapidly changing circumstances of the pandemic, was necessary for making sense of what was taking place, but provided little consideration for the long-term effects of the pandemic on human rights. Although the pandemic is not over, we believe that sufficient time has passed to allow us to think on the impact of the pandemic in a longer-term context. First, we provide a review of the existing literature on the effects of the pandemic on human rights, categorizing the literature as descriptive or prescriptive. Second, we introduce six articles contained in this special issue entitled “Beyond Complacency and Acrimony: Studying Human Rights in a Post-COVID-19 World” that in some ways address the shortcomings of the previous human rights literature. Finally, we provide concluding remarks we hope can act as inspiration for future scholarship.