id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
iiclr-29057	Mukum Mbaku, John	State Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic and Their Impact on Human Rights in South Africa	2025	68	.pdf	application/pdf	31912	2044	62	When COVID-19 came to South Africa in 2020, the country opted not to enact new laws to provide the government emergency powers to manage the pandemic.469 Instead, the government used existing constitutional law (e.g., the Bill of Rights) and statutes (e.g., the Disaster Management Act 57 of 2002), as well as binding international human rights law. The right to health is a fundamental right under international human rights law, it is an important part of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, and it is guaranteed as part of the bills of rights of many countries, including those in Africa.475 For example, § 27(1)(a) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa states that “[e]veryone has the right to have access to—(a) health care services.	cache/iiclr-29057.pdf	txt/iiclr-29057.txt