The importance of the humans rights-based approach in the response to the COVID-19 health crisis in Republic of North Macedonia

The pandemic caused by COVID-19 caused a health, economic and social crisis in the Republic of North Macedonia. In response to the pandemic, the government took a number of restrictive measures to prevent people from being exposed to the virus, thus slowing down its spreading, and introduced a set of measures to mitigate the adverse effects of the imposed restrictions. The adopted measures contributed significantly towards restricting citizens’ rights, and included a curfew, maintaining social distance, restricting movement and gathering, closing borders and stopping air traffic, online education, and the like. While such restrictions of the freedoms and rights may have, in part, been necessary to control the pandemic, many of them were too broad or neglected to consider effects on the most vulnerable categories of citizens, not only of the virus, but also of the socio-economic consequences. Hence, the purpose of this public policy paper is to analyze the response of the Gov