Human and Civil Rights and Freedoms in a State of Natural Disaster and Epidemic Emergency

Abstract

On 11th March 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a state of pandemic. In turn, on 21 March 2020, the Minister of Health, by way of a regulation, declared a state of epidemic in the territory of the Republic of Poland. At the same time, the decision resulted in the introduction of many restrictions concerning, inter alia, freedom of movement, assembly and trade. At the same time, discussions started on the constitutionality of the introduced restrictions on civil liberties. Having the above in mind, the aim of this article is to present the correlation in the sphere of limiting or suspending civil liberties in a state of emergency, such as a state of natural disaster, and in “non-emergency” states, such as a state of epidemic threat and a state of pandemic. Although the word “state” appears in the three mentioned legal situations, the state of natural disaster, as one of the three constitutional states of emergency, creates a different legal and socio-political situation than the state of epidemic threat or the state of pandemic. A common feature of the above-mentioned events, however, is that they became a fundamental disruption of the social context of individual and group functioning in connection with the occurrence of a human infectious disease.