COVID-19 related states’ obligations under international human rights law: an assessment of Egypt’s COVID-19 response through a gender lens

Abstract

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic presents a challenge to all spheres of life—health, economy, social security, livelihood and education. These challenges are particularly severe for women worldwide, and exacerbated for women in the Middle East and North African regions due to pre-existing gender restrictive social norms. In addition, challenges have been compounded by low rates of testing and reporting, high levels of extreme poverty and regional conflicts. Despite considerable gender equality gains in the region throughout the last decade, the pandemic threatens to reverse hard-won gains by confining women back to the domestic sphere, while increasing their vulnerability to gender-based violence. In line with most countries worldwide, the Egyptian government adopted a variety of containment measures to limit the spread of the virus on 14 March 2020. Those containment measures were accompanied by certain mitigation measures to reduce discriminative impacts on women. Against this backdrop, this paper examines Egypt’s COVID-19 response against the existence of an international obligation to adopt containment measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 as well as the existence and scope of an international obligation to adopt accompanying mitigation measures to reduce disproportionate impacts on women along women’s health, gender-based violence, women’s livelihood and girls’ education.