I have no doubt that enhancing human rights is a lofty value that should be translated into legal and institutional frameworks and daily cultural practices!

However, there are days accompanied by disasters and crises, causing every human being everywhere in this world to ask: Is enhancing and protecting human rights actually a sublime value in our country?

These kinds of days can be named as human rights days because they clearly show countries’ earnestness and seriousness in dealing with human rights!

Having said this, we can consider these days in which the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has spread widely and rapidly all over the world, as human rights days!

This is because they have placed before the world a real test, whose result is the degree of their concern for human rights!

Not only the countries, but the international bodies and mechanisms and nongovernment organizations (NGOs) have faced this test, as well.

As to countries, there are those that have proved to respect human rights above all other considerations, while others have shown that they consider human rights to be civil and political rights or subdivided in whatever way.

Several countries have shown that they do not care about human rights or one can say that the crisis has increased our conviction that these countries are so!

What is important is that it is as if this pandemic has come to give mankind a real lesson on human rights! To be objective, some countries respect human rights. Not only this, but they consider themselves among the ideal examples in enhancing and protecting human rights.

But they have a different policy when dealing with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. In brief, they consider this crisis to be a marathon and not a 100-meter race, the way the case is in Sweden.

Nobody can say for sure that such a policy is a success or failure, but from the human rights perspective, this policy is simply unacceptable.

For the sake of reasoning, there is nothing in international human rights law that permits neglecting, just not caring about, any human being’s right to live, whoever he might be, in whatever circumstances or whatever the laxity. What we see is that people are dying due to lax measures.

Furthermore, there is nothing in international human rights law that permits not providing the minimum healthcare or what leads to that. What we see is that the increase in the number of cases that have contracted the infection have become a huge burden on those countries’ health system.

As to the Saudi model in dealing with this pandemic, it is the ideal model by all merits! By saying this, I am not ignoring the other countries that have taken commendable measures, like Finland, Denmark, Norway, South Korea, the UAE and Bahrain.

But the measures taken by Saudi Arabia exceed the commitments countries were complying with, and were implemented in a record time. Hence, this allows us first to name it the Saudi model because the Kingdom took the initiative to implement it quite early.

Secondly, it is the ideal model because it did not stop at the limit of commitments but went way beyond that. Between us and those, who oppose this or cast doubts on it, are international standards for human rights.

I cannot forget a reality that some countries do not possess the resources and capabilities to deal ideally with this crisis. Here the responsibility lies on donor countries, international organizations and the international community in general, to provide the necessary assistance to those countries.

This is apart from this crisis being a global issue — that is, a pandemic — requiring the collective efforts of countries and organizations to counter it.

What is noteworthy, in this connection, is that Saudi Arabia which is currently chairing the G20, has announced providing $500 million to the international organizations to support the efforts to counter the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic.

This is in addition to the earlier $10 million aid the Kingdom provided the World Health Organization (WHO).

As to the organizations and other bodies concerned with human rights, many of them were like the rest who woke up late and started looking here and there for a role to carry out under this crisis.

This is at a time when their role was crystal clear, but their response was very late. There was no prior plan or even a simultaneous plan to deal with the crisis at its very start, lack of integrity or competence of some of their officials, and other factors caused them to appear in a state of confusion before the international community!

Not only this, but some of the NGOs did not like the response of some countries in dealing with the (COVID-19) crisis in a humanitarian fashion.

— Saudi writer @NaifMoalla