The protection of our health and safety is at the heart of the measures taken to combat the spread of COVID-19. The emergency situation requires quick and adequate solutions, but also to analyze the appearing legal challenges for institutions, businesses, citizens, and vulnerable groups. Emergency measures and actions should be proportionate to the threat and limited in time. They must be justified and proportionate when they place our rights ‘under quarantine’. Failure to do so may create crisis after the crisis - legal, democratic, affecting the rule of law in the long run.

At the same time, if we rapidly analyze, share experience, good practices, develop and offer effective approaches towards dealing with the emergency challenges, the potential negative consequences of the limitations put in place can be minimized.  
This is the core of the Initiative #RightsInCrisis - a group of lawyers who share their views on whether, to what extent, why, and what are the consequences of restricting our various rights, and whether better solutions are possible. The initiative is open and encourages all colleagues who encounter specific cases and wish to share their analysis or value-added information. BCNL has always supported association as a way to unite us and to achieve our goals more successfully. 

Follow the Initiative: medium.com
Say Hi: rights.in.crisis/gmail.com

You can read the first #RightsInCrisis analysis explaining the limitations of fundamental rights and freedoms during the first month of the Declared COVID-19 State of Emergency in the Republic of Bulgaria here.

#RightsInCrisis founders: Justice Nelly Koutzkova, Attorney Mihail Ekimdjiev, Justice Kalin Kalpakchiev, Judge Vladislava Tsarigradska, Attorney Maria Sharkova, Nadya Shabani, Ekaterina Baksanova.

What the Initiative doesn't aim for is:

Ø Pointless criticism that is not based on arguments;

Ø Political statements with no relation to the crisis and the measures taken;

Ø A language of hatred that divides and arouses fear.

Please note that #RightsInCrisis Initiative does not provide legal advice.