Page - 301 - in VULNERABLE - The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19

301The Right of Citizens Abroad to Return During a Pandemic to another. While the former embraces the right of persons to move freely and to choose a place of residence within the territory of a state (the internal aspect of freedom of movement), the latter covers the right to leave any country (including one’s own), either temporarily or permanently, and to enter or return to one’s own country (the external aspect of freedom of movement). The rights to leave and return are closely connected “in that the existence of one allows for the effec- tive exercise of the other,”2 but they respond to different needs.3 The person leaving a country may be doing so out of a desire to travel, emigrate, or seek refuge; whereas the person seeking to return to their country is usually motivated by a desire to return “home,” to the “place where he or she belongs, to his or her roots.”4 The right to enter or return to one’s own country is embodied in numerous international and regional human rights instruments, including Article 12(4) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (“no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country”).5 With the exception of Article 12(4) of the ICCPR, all other instruments envisage no particular restriction to its application. Moreover, while Article 12(3) of the ICCPR contem- plates permissible limitations to a citizen’s right to move or leave their state (when such limitations are “necessary to protect national secu- rity, public order, public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others”), no such limitations apply to the right to return in Article 12(4). The only limitation to the right to return found in Article 12(4) is in relation to the term “arbitrarily.” In 1999, the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC), a body of experts that monitors the implemen- tation of the Covenant, interpreted this term very restrictively, stat- ing “there are few, if any, circumstances in which deprivation of the right to enter one’s own country could be reasonable.”6 Therefore, in 2. Sander Agterhuis, “The Right to Return and its Practical Application” (2005) 58:1 RHDI 165 at 168. 3. It is also worth highlighting that the “right to return” was originally considered as a means for strengthening the “right to leave,” rather than as an independent right in and of itself. See Report  of  the  Third  Committee, UNGAOR, 3rd Sess, UN Doc A/777 (1948). 4. Agterhuis, supra note 2 at 168. 5. For more on these instruments, see François Crépeau & Delphine Nakache, “The Right to Leave and Return” in Rhona K M Smith & Christien van den Anker, eds, Essentials  of  Human  Rights (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005), 222-24. 6. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, General  Comment  27,  Freedom  of  movement  (Art  12), UNHRCOR, 1999, 67th Sess, UN Doc CCPR/C/21/ Rev 1/Add 9 (1999), at para 19.