Seminar Talk: Normative Challenges of the COVID-19 Pandemic Humanitarian Response and Human Rights Protection

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a new threat to life, and an evolving challenge to the normative framework informing human rights protection and humanitarian response. The seminar addressed the main provisions of international human rights and humanitarian law, focusing on the rules governing human rights monitoring and international relief schemes in situations of armed conflict and public health emergencies.

The seminar talk explored commonalities reported by humanitarian actors across the globe, and particular normative and operational challenges relevant to the COVID-19 outbreak in occupied Palestinian territory, drawing on the experience of humanitarian organizations responding to rising protection and relief needs in the West Bank and Gaza.