Children and COVID-19 Research Library

The Covid-19 health emergency has placed special demands on legal scholars, particularly on those based in the Global South. Brazil has been one of the epicenters of the pandemic, with over 680,000 deaths as of August 2022. Our narrative emerges from the duality of our positions amid a national tragedy—we are at the same time survivors of the collective threat of a would-be autocrat and a Covid-19-denialist government, and witnesses to how our preexisting privileges put us in a position of readiness “to speak truth to power.” Speaking truth to power means not only to exercise an independent spirit of analysis and judgment with respect to power, but also to interpellate power openly about its wrongdoings. We understand that our responsibility as legal scholars is to embrace the urgency of the moment—to expand our research agendas beyond our previous academic trajectories and work to mitigate situations of rights violations. It also means that our work as legal scholars has had to transcend the traditional academic spaces. We have positioned ourselves as advocates and litigators for those most affected by the pandemic, in particular vulnerable women. In this article, we share one of our key initiatives during the pandemic—a constitutional lawsuit to demand the right of pregnant and postpartum people to access Covid-19 vaccines.

The advent and perpetuation of the COVID-19 pandemic has served to highlight issues in American law that have long gone unaddressed. Prominent among them are the issues involving parents, the government, and the medical decisions of children. This article examines the current state of American law involving parental rights, children's rights, and the government's role in medical decisions of children and proposes a uniform act as a solution to the discrepancy and unpredictability in this area of American law.

Despite numerous legal and political challenges over the past decade, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) (2010) has been integrated into the health system of the United States (U.S.) and has played an important role in improving child health in this country by increasing access to health care for millions of children. The ACA has also provided a “healthcare lifeline” to children and families during the COVID-19 pandemic. This policy brief reviews the legal status of the ACA, explores the impact of COVID-19 on children's access to health insurance, discusses recent legislation supporting child health, and considers the future status of child health insurance coverage and access to care.

While the UK government has announced some relaxation of statutory regulations for children in care, advice at the time of writing indicates that local authorities in England and Wales remain obligated to allow looked-after children ‘reasonable contact’ with their birth families during the current COVID-19 lockdown. In light of this advice, it is crucial to understand how digital technologies can be managed to maintain contact while prioritising children’s best interests. This briefing paper highlights the key findings of a rapid evidence review that examines what is known about the implications of digital contact for the well-being of children who have been separated from their birth relatives in public law contexts. It also reviews relevant literature on digital contact in private law contexts, such as separation and divorce, and draws out key lessons for managing digital contact between birth relatives and children in public law placements.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a global emergency of multiple dimensions. There is now major concern that COVID-19 and its impact will push back fragile progress on gender equality, including slowing progress in reversing discriminatory laws, the enactment of new laws, the implementation of existing legislation and broader progress needed to achieving justice for all. This rapid assessment examines how the impacts of COVID-19 are threatening women’s ability to access justice. It examines the impacts of COVID-19, policy responses as well as outlines policy recommendations for the period ahead. Using a gender lens, the report documents major threats to women’s lives and livelihoods associated with COVID-19 – namely, curtailed access to justice institutions, rising intimate partner violence (IPV), threats to women’s rights to sexual and reproductive health, growing injustice for workers, discriminatory laws and lack of legal identity, as well as repercussions on forcibly displaced women and those deprived of their liberty.