Protesting During a Pandemic: State Responses During COVID-19 INCLO Report

Document Date: May 24, 2021

In 2020 and into the current year, activists and civil liberties organizations have faced two pandemics: COVID-19 and the repression against the right to protest. This report documents and analyzes protests and state actions affecting the right to protest since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Given the uncertainty of when the pandemic will end, the report also seeks to provide a global panorama for those organizations and civil society leaders who are seeking ideas and best practices of how to respond to pandemic measures that affect the right to protest. Based on cases and actions from 14 countries where the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations (INCLO) members are based, the issue paper’s main sections cover:

Criminalization of protests, ranging from ineffective blanket bans to the targeting of dissenters;
Excessive and discriminatory implementation of pandemic measures, from the abuses of states of emergency to evictions in the midst of the pandemic;
Illegal and disproportionate responses by police and military personnel, including the disproportionate targeting of marginalized communities; and
A sample of actions and strategies by INCLO members and partners, from litigation, monitoring, direct support, and campaigns.