Staying home saves lives - but what about human rights ?

The management of the covid-19 pandemic has put human rights under pressure in a way not seen in Western Europe since the World War II. However, while measures to deal with the pandemic generate restrictions on human rights, they can also - to some extent - be analysed as responses to human rights obligations that states must comply with, especially the right to life. The intervention, based on several papers already published or soon to be published, shows that it is not certain that European States will be massively held responsible for violations of this human right, for the way they reacted to limit the spread of the coronavirus within their population. Moreover, the fight against health risks, in the name of the right to life and the right to health, cannot be undertaken without a balanced consideration of other human rights, otherwise States will protect only naked/formal lives (biologic lives) and damage, sometimes irremediably, the substance of life, which requires the exercice of human rights.