3. PLANNING PRINCIPLES AND HUMAN RIGHTS CONSIDERATIONS Contingency planning is essential in ensuring an adequate health response and maintaining secure, safe and humane detention settings. Generally, plans are available for local, short-lived emergency and resilience actions. However, the evolving nature of infectious outbreaks of epidemic or pandemic proportions, locally, nationally and globally, go beyond such plans, having a potential impact on security, the wider judicial system and, in extreme cases, civil order. In addition, business continuity plans should be in place for ensuring the security and safety functions inherently associated with prisons and other places of detention. It is of paramount importance to work in partnership across public health agencies, health-care services and places of detention, bringing together community services and prison/detention services. The human rights framework provides guiding principles in determining the response to the outbreak of COVID-19. The rights of all affected people must be upheld, and all public health measures must be carried out without discrimination of any kind. People in prisons and other places of detention are not only likely to be more vulnerable to infection with COVID-19, they are also especially vulnerable to human rights violations. For this reason, WHO reiterates important principles that must be respected in the response to COVID-19 in prisons and other places of detention, which are firmly grounded in human rights law as well as the international standards and norms in crime prevention and criminal justice:6 • The provision of health care for people in prisons and other places of detention is a State responsibility. • People in prisons and other places of detention should enjoy the same standards of health care that are available in the outside community, without discrimination on the grounds of their legal status. • Adequate measures should be in place to ensure a gender-responsive approach in addressing the COVID-19 emergency in prisons and other places of detention. • Prisons and other detention authorities need to ensure that the human rights of those in their custody are respected, that people are not cut off from the outside world, and – most importantly – that they have access to information and adequate healthcare provision.7 6 Cf. CESCR General Comment No. 14: The Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health (Art. 12). Adopted at the Twenty-second Session of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, on 11 August 2000 (Contained in Document E/C.12/2000/4) (https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4538838d0.pdf); United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules). United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/70/175, adopted 17 December 2015 (https://undocs.org/A/ RES/70/175); High Commissioner updates the Human Rights Council on human rights concerns, and progress, across the world. Human Rights Council 43rd Session, Item 2, Geneva, 27 February 2020. United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews. aspx?NewsID=25621&LangID=E); Advice from the SPT [Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture] to the UK NPM [National Preventive Mechanism] regarding compulsory quarantine for Coronavirus (https://s3-eu-west-2. amazonaws.com/npm-prod-storage-19n0nag2nk8xk/uploads/2020/02/2020.02.25-Annexed-Advice.pdf). 7 Coronavirus: healthcare and human rights of people in prison. London: Penal Reform International; 2020 (https://www.penalreform.org/resource/coronavirus-healthcare-and-human-rights-of-people-in). 3