Impact

Supporting a Fair Approach to COVID Triage

/ Alexandros Antoniou / Leave a comment
Photo by Luis Melendez

A limited supply of life-saving medical equipment in the NHS is raising important questions about how frontline clinicians prioritise coronavirus patients for use of scarce resources and Essex rights experts are providing critical support to help avoid discrimination.

A team of researchers linked to the Essex Autonomy and Ethics of Powerlessness projects have provided a vital overview of existing guidelines around the world, subjecting them to a bioethical and human rights analysis. Their work aims to help NHS ethics committees formulate fair policy and triage procedures for coping with the extraordinary pressures of the pandemic.

Published this week, their report addresses the limitation of the well-known triage principle of maximising the number of lives saved on the basis of a clinical assessment of prognosis.

In order to help clinicians potentially faced with the agonising choice of whose lives should be saved, the team have explored how guidelines address issues such as whether an age limit should be set in order to triage patients or whether randomisation is a fair approach. “Our aim has been to provide a survey of existing research and guidance in a form useful to policymakers who are struggling to formulate just and evidence-based principles of triage during the COVID-19 pandemic,” explained Professor Sabine Michalowski, from the School of Law, who is leading the project.

Because there are no easy answers or uncontroversial approaches to many of the pressing issues arising in triage, it is crucial to have clear criteria in place on which decisions are based, as well as procedures that will be followed as part of the decision-making process.

Professor Michalowski explained that human rights must not be forgotten in developing responses to the medical and economic crises.

It is important for policymakers to be aware that, although there may not be one ‘right answer’ to the question about triage management, there are clearly some ‘wrong answers’ and it’s important to design and apply criteria with acute awareness of the importance of avoiding discrimination, based on age or disability for example.

Described by one frontline professional as “extremely useful as an incredibly clear synthesis of the literature and issues”, the report will also form the basis for a lecture on the ethics of triage by Professor Wayne Martin of the School of Philosophy and Art History.

This post first appeared on the website of the University of Essex and is reproduced here with permission and thanks.

Haim Abraham’s paper on Parenting, Surrogacy and the State cited by the Supreme Court of Israel

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The Israel Supreme Court recently cited a paper written by Haim Abraham, Lecturer in Law at the University of Essex.

The paper titled ‘Parenting, Surrogacy, and the State’ demonstrates that Israel’s legislation, and regulation of assisted reproduction treatments, systematically discriminates individuals and same-sex couples based on sexual orientation, family status, or gender.

By surveying the legislative and social developments in Israel in relation to surrogacy and the conceptualisation of the family unit, Haim shows that the right to parenthood is a fundamental negative constitutional right which extends to the use of surrogacy treatments. Furthermore, Haim establishes that the prohibition on same-sex couples and single individuals to engage in surrogacy arrangements fails to adhere to the principle of proportionality, as other less discriminatory practices are available and the harm to same-sex couples and single individuals in the current legislation outweighs its benefits.

On 27 February 2020, the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion. It held that the current Surrogacy Act of 1996 discriminates against same-sex couples and single men, and that the infringement on the rights to equality and parenthood is disproportionate.

Haim Abraham’s full paper in Hebrew is available here.

Reforming the Computer Misuse Act 1990

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Dr Audrey Guinchard, Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Essex, is delighted to attend at Westminster today’s launch event for ‘Reforming the Computer Misuse Act 1990’. The reform project was undertaken by the Criminal Law Reform Now Network (CRLN Network), headed by Dr John Child (University of Birmingham), upon Audrey’s proposal to tackle, what she argues, are the many flaws of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 (CMA).

The breadth of the CMA offences is such that non-culpable actors are criminalised, whether they are security researchers, journalists, or academics working on cyber-threats. After a multi-stakeholders collaboration of two years, the project has led to a series of recommendations to make the CMA fit for the 21st century. We encourage you all to join the debate on twitter #CMAReform.

The full report is available on the CRLN Network website. Audrey’s research on the criminalisation of security research and the need for reform can be read here. For information on one of the leading industry representatives supporting the project, the NCC group, see here. 

International Co-operation on Platform Governance

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Lorna Woods, Professor of Internet Law at the University of Essex and co-author of the Carnegie UK Trust’s proposals for Harm Reduction on Social Media, gave evidence on 7 November 2019 at the International Grand Committee on Disinformation and Fake News in Dublin. The Committee, formed of Parliamentarians from eleven countries, met for the third time, having previously convened in London and Ottawa.

The focus of the Dublin session was on “advancing international collaboration in the regulation of harmful content, hate speech and electoral interference online”. The session took place a day after a workshop on the theme of “international co-operation on platform governance”, facilitated by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and at which both Lorna Woods and Will Perrin participated in panel discussions.

In her written statement to the Grand Committee, Professor Woods set out the following perspective on the theme of international collaboration:

To work effectively together, Parliamentarians should develop a common language not just about the problems that exist but also possible mechanisms for moving towards a solution.

Two of the main difficulties when considering action in relation to online disinformation and fake news are scale and context of the content involved. Some platforms have an almost unimaginable amount of content uploaded and shared per second in different languages and with meanings that may have specific relevance for particular groups. Dealing with this situation on the basis of individual items of content is difficult.

An alternative way of considering solutions, and one proposed by the Carnegie UK Trust work in this area, is to look not at the content itself, but at the underlying systems which allow content to be shared and specifically how design and business choices affect our information environment. Social media platforms (as well as other service providers in the internet distribution chain) are not content-neutral. Whether or not they were intended so to do, they encourage and reward some content over other items of content. Some platforms – because of their design features – seem to have a greater problem with fake news than others. Some of this may be about size but it may also be about design choices: for example, the ease with which stories are forwarded on, or embedded from another source in the process decontextualising the material; the prioritisation of ‘click bait’ and stories stoking outrage. Looking at the information system behind the content focusses attention of the mechanisms by which disinformation spread, which to a large extent remain constant from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and over time, rather than questions of individual content which change frequently and also raises the question of what particular content means and whether it is true or not.

The proposal put forward by the Carnegie UK Trust is for a statutory duty of care. The duty of care is a process-based obligation orientated towards the reduction of harm on the Internet. The obligation is to consider the effect of the services/tools that are being offered and how they are being used, especially bearing in mind their design features. Where harm is or becomes likely as a result of the service, the obligation on the service provider is to take steps to mitigate. The existence of ‘problem content’ is an indicator of a process problem, but ultimately success is measured by reference to care in design, development and maintenance of the service not by the existence of particular items of content. The use of the duty of care model is not a ‘silver bullet’ and there may well be instances when additional, targetted action is needed.

A process-focussed duty at systems level has advantages in the international context of disinformation on the internet:

  • it mitigates against concerns about scale
  • it minimises risks and difficulties arising from understanding meaning and context in different environments; and
  • it thus allows a single, common approach to be taken internationally.

The International Grand Committee will hold a press conference on its conclusions at the end of its Dublin session.

This piece originally appeared on the CarnegieUK Trust website and is reproduced here with permission and thanks. Read the original post here.

New Guidelines on Investigating Violations of International Humanitarian Law

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Noam Lubell, Professor of International Law at the University of Essex and Swiss Chair of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) at the Geneva Academy, has co-authored new Guidelines for States on how to investigate allegations in armed conflict.

The Guidelines on Investigating Violations of IHL: Law, Policy, and Good Practice are the outcome of a five-year research project, which was initiated in 2014 in partnership with the Geneva Academy of IHL and Human Rights and joined in 2017 by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The new Guidelines are set to become the international benchmark for effective investigations into violations of international humanitarian law in all conflicts around the world. Being sensitive to the differences that characterise domestic legal and investigative systems, they identify several practical and legal issues that may arise in such investigations or should be considered beforehand. Their overarching aim is “to provide practical assistance by setting out a general framework for investigations in armed conflict and, where relevant, the corresponding international principles and standards”.

Professor Lubell addressing the New York Diplomatic Community. Image: Geneva Academy

Professor Lubell’s co-authors were Jelena Pejic, Senior Legal Adviser at the ICRC, and Claire Simmons, a Researcher at Essex Human Rights Centre and PhD candidate in the School of Law. Their findings were presented in October 2019 in New York before delegates from the UN General Assembly First and Sixth Commissions, UN agencies and other experts in an event co-organized with the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the UN.

Business and human rights: how to reconcile them in investor-State dispute settlement?

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How can business and human rights be reconciled in investor-State dispute settlement? This controversial issue is examined in two recent contributions by Anil Yilmaz Vastardis, a lecturer at the University of Essex law school.

The first  is a submission made jointly with Tara Van Ho and Luis Felipe Yanes (PhD Candidate) to the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights. This was submitted to the Working Group’s Crowd-Drafting session for designing a human-rights compatible international investment agreement which took place on 27 November 2018 at the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights.  The proposal includes 10 clauses that States can adopt into their investment treaties to ensure compatibility with international human rights law.

Secondly a paper recently published in the London Review of International Law concerns EU proposals for investor-State dispute settlement.  Entitled “Justice bubbles for the privileged: a critique of the investor-state dispute settlement proposals for the EU’s investment agreements”, the article criticises the judicialisation of investor state dispute settlement in the direction envisaged by the EU’s Investment Court System because it prioritises institutions of justice for foreign investors over the improvement of local institutions that could provide justice for members across society, including foreign investors.

photo credit: Human Rights Council of Australia