It's been a difficult year for human rights. We've been reminded that rights and freedoms don't exist in isolation from each other, and at times some rights must be balanced against other rights. I'm not sure we're yet fully assessed if those balances have been well achieved.

People's right to be protected from a pandemic necessarily means some other rights might be limited, but some have tried to deal in absolutes - either 'public health' and community fears mean other rights can be ignored, or that protection from a pandemic isn't a right at all

Shifting too far towards the public health imperative has already seen and is seeing negative consequences for many, and time will tell what the long term impacts of a pandemic-driven increase in authoritarian state power will mean (and indeed an increase in corporate power)

We in the comfortable white western communities have taken rights and freedoms for granted for a long time, but through history they've all been hard won and often hard to defend when challenged

This year, reasonably-minded defenders of human rights have accepted that some short-term compromises have been warranted, but others have struggled to feel comfortable with pushing back at all when governments may have tried going too far