Overview

Emergency and disaster situations produce great pressure on the protection of rights and, in the case of health emergencies from epidemics and pandemics, on the right to health and the fulfilment of this right under exceptional conditions. Supported by an approach anchored in the history of human rights, jurist Lisa Forman examines the impacts of the current pandemic on the evolution of the right to health and the consequences of the policies of deregulation, privatisation, commodification and austerity that characterize neoliberalism. The author explains the need to consider the conflicting views that permeate the dominant conception of human rights and the way in which their association with neoliberal policies in the context of global health compromises the fulfilment of the right to health, prevents the recognition of the diversity and conditions of inequality that the struggle for this right, calling for the decolonization of human rights and global health.