In human rights terms, Covid-19 could be a game-changer. Governments everywhere have mobilised resources and regulated markets to increase access to healthcare, housing, and food, in truly unprecedented ways. State actions are progressing economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights where decades of campaigning have struggled to make a dent.
As author and activist Arundhati Roy so eloquently put it, the pandemic is a portal. The lockdown makes visible what has been hidden, offering a glimpse of what can be done when equal treatment – and the social, economic and health protection of all – becomes everyone’s concern.
The emergency measures taken have been breathtaking – bans on evictions, mortgage and rent holidays, universal health care, guaranteed minimum incomes – have all taken place with a speed and certainty that cuts right across all the “impossibilities” of the recent past. It suggests a new and potential reality of how we might live.
