Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented public health crisis that intensified
inequalities worldwide. Pandemics should not allow for neglecting or diminishing human
rights, but rather incorporate the rights of all individuals when proposing policies.
Marginalized populations are often excluded when forming policy decisions and are often
disproportionately affected during health crises. As such, this dissertation will examine
how Malta upheld its human rights obligations towards migrants through policy creation
during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a systematic review of policies created in
response to the COVID-19 pandemic this research will highlight how one policy, L.N. 92
of 2020, led to conditions in society that violated the human rights of migrants in Malta.
The policy was cross-referenced against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the
European Convention on Human Rights, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child
to explore how Malta failed to uphold its human rights obligations to migrants based on
incidents reported from the People for Change Foundation. To deepen the analysis these
incidents were analyzed within the conflict analysis and resolution theoretical frameworks of Galtung’s (1969) structural violence and Cobb’s (2013) narrative theory.
The results yielded from this research demonstrate that while Malta was compliant with
international law to institute the travel ban, the situations that emerged from the
implementation of the travel ban violated the human rights of migrants and emphasizes
how adopting a human rights-based approach to policies can be employed to ensure that
marginalized populations are included and respected during policy creation.
