Chapter 5: Human Rights: Four Lessons from the Pandemic in a Post-pandemic World

Fundamental changes to our societies present various political challenges. Roughly one can distinguish between changes and events that are “man made” in the sense that they were more or less created through human action such as wars, revolutions and ethnic and religious conflicts – and – those changes that were primarily created by “nature” such as tsunamis, earthquakes, climate change, pandemics and epidemics.

However, human responsibility could be applied in both cases and hence, be evaluated in moral terms. The ethical perspective that is assumed in this essay is mainly the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and its rights, freedoms and duties. In the first form of challenges, the causal responsibility and human responsibility are clear cut as the catastrophes and the political challenges would not have occurred if no human will and/or actions would have been involved. In the latter case, human actions can trigger and increase natural catastrophes such as environmental and climate crisis. Some side effects in these latter cases could be unintended but they could also be more or less predicted and controlled, which increases the responsibility of different actors.