The Restricted Individual Freedoms in the Covid Emergency

The sudden spread of the COVID-19 epidemic has resulted in a general obligation for States and competent international organisations to introduce extensive and effective measures to limit its growth and mitigate its effects. As a result, a number of measures adopted have led to inevitable restrictions on the full enjoyment of individual rights: the imposition of quarantine is an example of a restriction of the right to personal freedom; the creation of zones from which it is not allowed to leave (the so-called "red zones") affects freedom of movement; in some particularly serious emergency cases, governments have had to use surveillance techniques - through the deployment of police forces - which severely restrict the right to private and family life. A clear example of measures that have restricted fundamental freedoms is the control of individuals through the tracking of mobile phones; this measure, adopted in Corea, seems almost to deny individual freedoms. It becomes fundamental to deal with the relationship between the serious Covid-19 pandemic that has spread in recent months throughout the world, and the impact that the strong measures adopted at global level by the governments of individual states to contain contagion produce in terms of guaranteeing the protection and exercise of fundamental human rights, enshrined at international level by the European Convention on Human Rights, with particular reference to the implications to which the adoption of such measures has given rise in relation to respect for the right to private and family life and the main fundamental freedoms: of movement, expression of one's religion or belief, expression, assembly and association.