Displaying items by tag: Crisis
Crises such as hybrid threats, armed conflicts, natural disasters, pandemics, and economic turmoil frequently pose significant challenges to the protection of human rights. In these circumstances, states and the international community must ensure that fundamental freedoms and rights remain safeguarded—even when drastic measures become necessary.
When thinking about human rights in times of crisis, many are reminded of the saying, “Those who are drowning must save themselves.” Yet we should remember that the cornerstone here is each individual’s right to be protected by the state. So just how far or close are we to that ideal when it comes to receiving state support in critical moments? And what specific situations and crises are we talking about?
Human Rights Protection During War and Armed Conflicts
Armed conflicts pose one of the greatest threats to human rights and to adherence to humanitarian law, often involving war crimes and mass refugee flows. International humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions, mandates the protection of civilians and prisoners of war. However, many governments and armed groups disregard these principles, leading to large-scale rights violations. Sadly, this is still happening in the 21st century, including in Europe. There are reports of deliberate attacks on civilians, a failure to aid the wounded and sick, shortages or complete lack of first-aid supplies, and other abuses targeting the local population.
Natural Disasters and Pandemics
Natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes can force people to relocate, overwhelm healthcare systems, and cause food shortages. In such situations, human rights include ensuring people’s access to basic needs, as well as imposing on the state a duty to provide information and take effective action.
Pandemics like COVID-19 have shown how difficult it is to balance the protection of public health with individual freedoms. The restrictions on movement we experienced had a considerable impact on both economic and social rights. Human rights advocates and influential public figures have questioned whether health and the right to life should have justified such sweeping limits on freedom of movement and assembly. In many places—especially authoritarian regimes—these measures opened the door to further human rights restrictions, including unmerited tracking of personal data such as people’s habits and movements.
A Fundamental Need: The Right to Health and Healthcare
In all of the scenarios noted above, access to sustainable healthcare is an essential requirement. The right to health is a key human right protected by various international agreements, including the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, as well as Article 111 of Latvia’s Constitution. It is the government’s responsibility to strengthen support mechanisms and ensure that people have access to medical care and medications—even in emergencies.
Adequate access to medicines and healthcare services is vital for public health. International law obligates governments to guarantee people’s access to necessary medicines, vaccines, and medical treatment, including state-funded care for vulnerable groups. But are we in Latvia really prepared to confront potential challenges?
It seems absurd that more and more people are afraid to call an ambulance for fear of a hefty bill. It is equally troubling that healthcare professionals feel underfunded and underappreciated. Although efforts have been made to explain the situation, public concern remains high. Doctors and nurses continue to complain about low pay and insufficient social protections.
During the pandemic, several countries introduced emergency measures to keep healthcare accessible for everyone. Experts, however, have debated just how well these measures worked. Providing equal treatment and equal access is no simple task, especially given many individuals’ unique circumstances. Keeping the public safe while protecting vulnerable groups—children, seniors, and those with chronic conditions who may lack financial reserves—is a complex endeavour. To do this effectively, it is not enough to rely on past experience; proactive planning for different crisis scenarios is needed.
Such crises often exacerbate existing inequalities and discrimination, limiting people’s access to work, education, and healthcare. Governments need to put support systems in place to protect those who are most at risk, since the treatment of vulnerable groups reveals how fragile society is as a whole. In Latvia, we have long discussed unequal access to goods and services, particularly in rural regions and remote areas. Lately, there has also been growing focus on pharmacy availability in both urban and rural settings, as well as on maintaining adequate reserves of essential medicines for crisis situations. Certified pharmacist Zane Dzirkale, a co-founder of the “Health Care System Resilience” think tank, addressed these issues in a recent publication.
Potential Solutions
When we talk about “the state,” we are also talking about every one of us—each playing our role and fulfilling our responsibilities. Yet recent years have shown the significant power of communities and civic organizations, including community centres and service hubs in towns and cities. We have no shortage of good practices in this realm. For instance, the Latvian Platform for Development Cooperation responded rapidly to Ukraine’s need for assistance; there are also inspiring examples of local community collaboration both in Latvia’s regions and in Riga. Support for Ukraine is ongoing, provided by the Marta Centre, the association “Tavi draugi,” and numerous other civic organizations. Crises have shown that the potential of communities is undervalued—even though the need for community engagement continues to grow.
Community strength is also reflected in the concept of community policing, where maintaining public order is not left solely to the police; residents, too, share responsibility. Community policing is built on trust, prevention, and more efficient crime reduction—rather than merely responding after the fact, the police work hand in hand with residents to solve problems at the neighbourhood level. Recall how a local resident in Latgale discovered a drone, alerted the local police unit, and set in motion a response well before the media picked up the story. This community-focused approach has proven successful elsewhere in the European Union and has become an integral part of Latvia’s State Police strategy.
Conclusions
Protecting human rights—especially the right to life and health—in times of crisis is one of the greatest challenges facing the modern world. The international community, national governments, and nongovernmental organizations must coordinate to ensure these rights remain intact, no matter how severe the crisis. Sustainable and effective healthcare policies can greatly enhance people’s living conditions and foster societal stability and resilience—offering protection for individuals’ health and lives. Equally important is the support of communities and NGOs, both in normal times and during periods of crisis.
Ilze Bērziņa
EUNWA Advisory Board, and co-founder of the think tank “Health Care System Resilience”; human rights expert, and lecturer at the Rīga Stradiņš University Faculty of Social Sciences.
References:
100 days of war between Russia and Ukraine, 4100 civilians dead including 260 children. 5000 injured. 6.8 million Ukrainian refugees.
810 days of Covid19 and its variants, 528,275,339 confirmed cases worldwide of which 6,293,4214 died.
We have been taught that the time of a crisis does not exist in terms of uniformity and timeline, because in a crisis, time becomes the beating of useful actions to contain the damage and make people and territories safe again. Actions are taken with immediacy, between the occurrence of the early signals and the manifestation of the critical episode. Actions then follow one another, in order of priority, in an authentic flow of acts and communications that can no longer and must not be stopped, just like those mountain fountains in which water gushes out spontaneously without being artificially extracted.
The time of the crisis is not scheduled on the timeline because, if it was possible, actions would be performed in concert, all in unison: I manage the consequences, I support the people and areas affected, I search for the causes and contain any reputational damage. All together. Since simultaneity cannot be managed, actions are performed according to strict priority logic. The episode that generates the crisis or catastrophe, even when it causes long-term damage, is normally short and intense: an accident, a flood, an earthquake, a fire, a bankruptcy, a bereavement...
But these 100 days of war, added to the 700 of the pandemic, clearly suggest that one of the 'new elements' to be understood and managed is time. That time that has changed us and will never make us the same again.
The ancient Greeks already taught us that the perception of time changes and that objective and subjective time do not coincide. In extremely dangerous situations, time slows down and moments become eternal. This distortion is created by our memory because more critical events generate more memories and therefore the mind perceives a longer time. To the effects on memory and emotions, fatigue must be added. A fatigue which comes suddenly and that brings with it a progressive and understandable indifference. The number of articles and reports devoted to the war has decreased eightfold since the beginning of the conflict, and interactions on social media have dropped from 109 million to 4.8 million. Levels of attention and concentration on risks and consequences have declined, and clocks continue to record the simple passage of time trying to shift and neutralise, on the symbolic horizontal line, the sinusoidal curve with its alternating sharp peaks.
Time has become part of the crisis too: an off-stage voice, but an undisputed protagonist that, once again, forces us to face fatigue, since the risk of remaining defenceless and weakened in the desperate attempt to imagine a crisis coming to an end is too close and too dangerous. That is why, in the books we are going to write about the lessons we have learned, under the heading 'prompt and immediate reaction' we will also add 'danger of adapting to the level of risk', a new parameter that will have to be taken into great consideration, because indifference and fatigue are threats that leave open the risk that someone could always take advantage of the time factor.
Paola Guerra - Founder and Director of the International School of Ethics & Security Milan - L'Aquila
