Human Rights and Te Tiriti o Waitangi: COVID-19 and Alert Level 4 in Aotearoa New Zealand Snapshots - He whāiroiro Personal Protective Equipment - Taputapu Tautiaki Tangata Access to PPE (masks, gloves and gowns) is pivotal to ensuring appropriate protection for the people most vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19, such as disabled people, older people and those with underlying health conditions. Home and community support workers provide critical care for at-risk communities. The intimate and mobile nature of support work creates significant risks. These can be mitigated by adequate and equitable access to PPE. The response to concerns within the home and community workforce, and those it cares for, has been slow. In the absence of adequate PPE, some disabled people and support workers halted support work arrangements to reduce their risk of exposure. Following persistent advocacy by the Disability Rights Commissioner and others, PPE was made available to the community workforce. But significant problems persist, including the absence of sector specific guidance on PPE use. District Health Boards’ unfamiliarity with the disability sector is also a problem. Iwi response teams, Mäori providers and Mäori community organisations have struggled to access PPE in order to keep themselves and whänau protected. The Auditor-General has recently launched an independent review into PPE management during the COVID-19 crisis. Everyone is entitled to health protection from epidemic diseases. Human rights, including the rights to life, health protection and equality, and Te Tiriti, require the government to take all effective and reasonable measures to provide adequate and equitable access to PPE. The government has fallen short of these obligations. 10 Explicit consideration of the government’s human rights and Te Tiriti obligations in relation to PPE will help to ensure that it does better in Alert Level 3 than it did in Level 4. Te Tiriti requires Mäori leadership and partnership in relation to all health issues, including PPE. Likewise, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities requires that disabled people should be involved in decisions that impact on them, such as those relating to PPE. Access to justice - Āheinga ki te ture manatika The Human Rights Review Tribunal closed for the duration of alert Level 4. Justice delayed is justice denied. Many claimants in the Human Rights Review Tribunal are vulnerable: they may have suffered discrimination, racist attacks, sexual harassment or privacy breaches. All hearings for March, April and May 2020 are cancelled and timetables are suspended for other matters, putting later hearings at risk. There has been no attempt to hear claims or procedural issues remotely, no new claims are being processed and there has been no uptake of the use of technology to progress claims. By contrast, some courts have embraced the challenge of working differently under Level 4. For example, the Employment Court processed new claims. The Court contacted parties to arrange hearings on the papers, by telephone or audio-visual link. It continued to release decisions and an active Twitter account gave updates. We commend that approach. On the other hand, the Tribunal’s approach is a serious human rights issue: it is inconsistent with the claimants’ right to an effective remedy for the significant harm they have suffered. In Alert Level 3, we urge the government to provide the Tribunal with adequate resources to hear and decide