Covid-19 and Inequality: The Importance of Social Rights

Governments responses to the Covid-19 pandemic have included drastic public health measures that restrict personal freedoms on a scale not seen outside of war times. Less attention has been devoted to their impact rights to an adequate standard of living, social security, housing, education, and even the right to health (‘social rights'). This piece explores this less debated but nonetheless important and complex relationship between pandemics and social rights, focusing on the disproportionately negative impact that pandemics and their responses have on the poorer’s health and socio-economic well-being (part I), and on what social rights have to offer, if anything, to address or at least minimise this impact (part II). It concludes that improving social rights and reducing inequalities in normal times is not only a moral and legal duty of governments and societies but also an effective pandemic preparedness measure.