COVID-19 Pandemic in Somalia: A Constitutional Perspective

Abstract

The Federal and state governments of Somalia declared a 15-days lockdown of the country as part of the measures to address the Covid-19 pandemic. This raised Constitutional and legal interest. The country’s legal system is integral to how its citizens look upon issues that concern the country in general and their individual lives in particular. The federal constitution still lacks one of the fundamental rights such as right to privacy, protection of health work which the state was supposed to adopt for public interest when putting restrictions on human rights of members of society have to be based on duly enacted law of general application, hence called, ‘the principle of legality’. The study employed on doctrinal method. Therefore it relied on both primary and secondary sources. The primary source includes Somali Constitution, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. On the other hands, the secondary sources are textbooks among others