Espérant Sintondji
Steering Committee of the University Residents‘ Committee – BD-CR
The right to education and human rights are inalienable principles of the human being whose sole objective is his full development. But these principles have too often received real blows during humanitarian crises or as a result of bad faith by politicians. Indeed, the crisis of COVID-19 which raged and shook the whole world with its restrictive measures, which in other countries were occasions of bullying, human rights violations and violations of the right to education, as some students were even prevented from accessing the places of training for lack of masks or mufflers put in force by the central authority. In other countries, some students have been quarantined and deprived of school for days just because there were contaminated individuals in their places of residence. Better still, the lockdown, which also lasted for weeks, led to the systematic closure of schools and training facilities. Thus, we can affirm that these different irregularities encountered during the COVID 19 crisis have caused the limitation of the right to education or the violation of the right to education in many countries. These violations were not only limited to restrictive measures. Before In anticipation of the lockdown and the health and security cordons imposed by the central authority, some parents deliberately chose to prevent their children from going to school under the assumption that the COVID-19 virus was circulating in the air, and they were harassed for days before the lockdown even came into effect, which unfortunately further prolonged the suffering of these children.
At the same time, the States, in their desire to contain the disease and to defeat the fatality, have decreed that access to all public administrations is not only subject to the wearing of nose masks, but also to vaccination against COVID-19 with a vaccination pass. Some trade unionists have been refused access to meetings between members of the government and trade unions because they did not have their vaccination pass due to their non-negotiable refusal to be vaccinated. This prevention of access to meetings violates two rights: the right of representation and the right to unionize. Also certain craftsmen, were prevented from carrying out their various activities, because their activities seem to gather many people at the same time. These are the promoters of bars, nightclubs, entertainers or cultural promoters, who have been idle for weeks or months before being allowed to reopen their doors. The imposed sanitary cordons led to the blocking of roads in many countries and it was very difficult to leave one commune to another in the same region. And this violated the free movement of people and goods, thus putting a large number of cab drivers and transporters out of work on the one hand, and on the other hand, those who had the possibility of carrying out their activities within their own communes and regions of residence, into partial unemployment. This state of affairs has only made the violation of human rights worse. Even worse, the vaccine pass has become the most formidable weapon, forcing citizens to be vaccinated against their will, even though many have denounced the dangerous and even deadly side effects of these vaccines.
This constraint violates in many major democracies, including France, the fundamental laws or conventions that govern the administration of a vaccine to a citizen. Even the United Nations has remained silent or inactive in the face of this situation, which has prevented many citizens of the world from traveling freely as they used to and from carrying out their activities, because many countries have imposed the vaccination pass in the travel documents. As a result, other states have taken advantage of the crisis to boost their economies, because each of them has set a price of their own choosing for obtaining or establishing the vaccine pass, the price of which varies from one country to another, despite the increase in purchasing power that has accompanied this crisis known as COVID-19. Even in the hospitals of some countries, wearing a mask remains a non-negotiable formality for accessing services and benefits, even though their governments have officially decreed that masks must be removed. The list is long when it comes to rights violations during this crisis that continues to shake citizens in some countries.*
*In Asia, some citizens have even recently been evicted from their homes on the pretext that these homes are to house or accommodate the quarantined. At the same time, acute lockdowns continue in countries where human rights are relegated to the back burner. Many have hidden behind this crisis to bully, abuse or violate human rights in one way or another. In some cases, it is even strongly recommended that all teachers get vaccinated before going to the classroom, and in the same period, certain activities concerning the advancement or development of their careers have been promoted just to force them to get vaccinated against their will. Other teachers would have even simulated illnesses by abandoning the learners in order to escape this vaccination imposed by the leaders. But education being the key to the development of any nation and at the same time a very sensitive sector, one must avoid making decisions that could jeopardize the smooth running of activities.
*To mitigate all these irregularities generated by the COVID-19 crisis, the United Nations or major world organizations must take the bulls by the horns in order to regulate or restore human rights, the right to education and others, because whoever speaks of lockdown is also indirectly speaking of the cessation of these rights without mentioning it in his actions.
