Africa-Press – Zambia. While I strongly encourage and urge everyone to vaccinate, I find the talk by the government of mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations frightening. Let’s persuade, plead with our people to take COVID-19 vaccinations, but let’s avoid blackmailing them into doing so. Vaccinations should never be mandatory. It is a very serious human rights violation to make vaccinations compulsory.
Human rights conventions demand that a person must not be subjected to medical treatment without his or her full, free, and informed consent. And because vaccination is a medical procedure, forcing a person to be vaccinated against his or her will is a clear violation of this right.
Every person has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief, and that a person must not be coerced or restrained in a way that limits his or her freedom to have or adopt a religion or belief in observance or practice. Conscience is a person’s conviction as to what is right and wrong. Some people may object on political grounds, believing that it is not the proper role of government to force people to be vaccinated, even if they do not object in principle to vaccination. Some people are genuinely concerned that receiving a vaccination poses a substantial risk of physical injury or harm. Some people may object on religious grounds to being vaccinated.
For all these categories of people, forcing a person to be vaccinated violates that person’s freedom of conscience or religious beliefs, or forces them to do something they believe is potentially harmful. Underlying all the rights protected by human rights conventions is the concept of autonomy and dignity. Each person has the right to determine for himself or herself matters of bodily integrity including whether to be vaccinated.
Under international human rights law, especially Article 4(2) of the ICCPR, certain rights are non-derogable, even in a time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation — that is, the rights cannot be limited under any circumstances. Non-derogable rights include the right not to be subjected to medical experimentation (contained in article 7). In other words, there are no countervailing rights or considerations which would make it legitimate to force someone to undergo medical experimentation or treatment without their consent.
This is an indication that the right not to be subjected to medical treatment is a fundamental right and cannot be set aside in the interests of other policy goals. Therefore, although an international treaty cannot override the interpretation of domestic legislation, international law provides a strong indication that the right not to be subjected to medical treatment is an absolute right that cannot be limited. This ought to set a very high bar on any attempt to mandate forms of medical treatment — including vaccination.
The right not to be subjected to medical treatment recognises each person’s autonomy: that every person’s body is not a disposable object to be subjected under the perceived common good. Imposing mandatory vaccination on every citizen needs to be recognised as a clear breach of this commitment to uphold rights. It is troubling that the rights supposedly protected by the ICCPR can be so easily overridden.
Mandatory vaccination has significant implications for human rights and the nature of government power which need to be clearly understood. For a start, it has implications for the nature of consent.
Despite this clear requirement for free consent, the foreshadowed vaccine mandate means very Zambian will need to be vaccinated, regardless of their personal views. This arguably poses an alarming precedent. If a person can be forced against his or her will to be vaccinated for the common good, does this signal an erosion of bodily autonomy?
Mandatory vaccination signals that there is no area of life exempt from political and governmental control. Even fundamental questions of human autonomy and bodily integrity are now subject to regulation by the state.
Finally, compulsory vaccination treats the decision as to whether to be vaccinated or not as a decision that needs to be made on our behalf by others. Every problem in society is a technocratic problem for governments and experts to solve. This effectively infantilises the population, treating people as if they cannot be trusted to make responsible decisions. And yet democracy is predicated on the principle of popular sovereignty, the idea that the government is elected by and accountable to the people. We can be trusted to determine who will govern us but not fundamental questions of our own bodily integrity. Many will agree with compulsory vaccination, but this sets a precedent of government control which is unlikely to stop with vaccination.
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