Vaccination Policies: A Contemporary Threat to Human Rights?

Abstract

The Coronavirus commonly referred as Covid-19 swept the world in 2019. As the disease was declared a pandemic, the world needed to develop vaccines to battle Covid- 19 in order to mitigate the rapid spread of its infection. States including Sri Lanka immediately enforced quarantine laws as they enforced special measures prioritizing health and safety of their citizens. Enforcement of vaccination policies was prominent in such special measures implemented by the states. The two of the foremost concerns which arose from the enforced vaccination policies were the vaccine hesitancy and equal distribution of the vaccine and in light of human rights. This research attempts to analyse those two concerns against human rights as to its success in striking a balance between the protection of human rights and safeguarding public health. The approach taken for this research will be qualitative and librarybased. The research will be concluded by analyzing the consistency of the enforced vaccination policies in Sri Lanka with human rights and the extent to which the policies could be justified by law by the application of the proportionality test.