WWe closed our schools and daycare centers for months. We let the children return to their educational institutions on a weekly basis. We made them wear masks and keep their distance. Sports, cultural and leisure events have been cancelled. Only late and only very gradually, partly under exclusionary “2G regulations”, did we enable children and young people to participate in society again. Even today, children under the age of 12 are denied visitation rights in many hospitals – a random example is the visitor regulation of the Franziskus Hospital in Bielefeld.
Since the summer of 2020, we have read in many studies how the health and psyche of children and young people have suffered massively from our corona measures. We therefore know of a significant increase in diseases such as obesity, eating disorders and depression, of disorders in social behavior and development as well as physical, especially sexualized violence. A connection between corona measures and mental disorders in children and adolescents was nevertheless denied by relevant political bodies. We are now in the third Corona year, the end of the summer holidays is imminent. The teachers’ association calls for a legal basis for the mask requirement in schools. The STIKO recommends vaccinating healthy children between the ages of 5 and 12, which – as experience has taught us – is a first step towards “2G regulations”, which then also apply to this age group. We think: There needs to be a change of direction.
The primacy of the best interests of the child
It is worth remembering the most fundamental connections of a functioning society: Children are the future of society, of all of us. In the future, children and young people will control the fortunes of our world. They may do things differently than we do. We will support them with our experiences, at the same time we will learn from them. Children and young people are vulnerable. They depend on us for their development. We have to speak for them because they often can’t do it themselves. This concern and responsibility affects all of us, not just those who are parents of children. All generations are equally recognized in our society, all people deserve protection. Even more applies to children: Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child obliges us to “consider the best interests of the child as a priority” in all measures affecting children.
Children and young people have shown solidarity beyond all measure during the course of the pandemic. In this age group, infections with the corona virus usually cause very mild courses of the disease. Severe courses and deaths without previous illnesses are very rare. The numerous restrictions that children and young people had to put up with were therefore largely to protect others – the elderly and the sick.
affected health and psyche
In principle, it is correct that we have to accept restrictions on freedom in order to protect others. However, all measures must be measured against the principle of proportionality and thus be suitable, necessary and appropriate to achieve a legitimate purpose. Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child obliges us to only choose measures that are detrimental to children as a last resort. It is doubtful that this is the case with regard to all measures that were enacted against children and young people during the course of the pandemic, even if the high degree of uncertainty, especially at the beginning, about the course of the pandemic and the effectiveness of countermeasures are taken into account becomes.
Looking back seems less important to us than looking ahead. The pandemic is still to be countered in Germany with measures – especially from next autumn. It is important not to repeat mistakes made. In view of all the burdens that young people have had to carry in the past two and a half years, this includes one thing in particular: Measures should (without exception!) no longer be aimed at this group of people. Schools are not drivers of the pandemic. At the same time, the interventions in the freedom of children and young people to contain the pandemic have a particularly massive impact on their development, their physical and mental health. This is now also confirmed by the report of the expert committee according to § 5 paragraph 9 of the Infection Protection Act, according to which children were massively and negatively affected by our corona protection measures and more than all other members of society in their health and psyche. From our point of view, it is therefore unacceptable to pick up on this immediately.
Classrooms are cooled down
On the contrary: The expert committee set up by the federal government has declared a meaningful evaluation of the effectiveness of those measures that target children and young people, not least because of the lack of data, to be unfeasible. In addition to school closures, this also applies to the wearing of masks in class and the constant testing of children and young people without cause. There is a lack of meaningful data from Germany to assess the effectiveness of, for example, the restriction of leisure activities, school closures and alternating classes and other access restrictions in public life.
After more than two years of the pandemic, the state would have been able to do this. Because this did not happen, corresponding measures cannot simply be taken again when the situation in the intensive care units worsens again in autumn, also due to the lack of staff that has existed for years. There is too much uncertainty about the actual effectiveness of such measures to justify them for any longer to those who are not themselves exposed to a significant health risk from Corona, but who are particularly vulnerable to measures given their living situation. Our plea is therefore: Release the children and young people (finally) from the pandemic measures policy.
In the past two and a half years, we have made it too easy for ourselves by applying large numbers of protective measures against the corona virus with a high level of intervention on the weakest in our society, without sufficiently empirically verifying their effectiveness in combating the pandemic and without adequately acknowledging the great suffering , which we thereby evoke. Not listening enough to children’s voices triggers a dangerous trend: we can already see today that measures to avoid energy shortages as a result of the reduced Russian gas supplies are suddenly starting to affect the children: classrooms are cooled down, hot water in schools and gyms is turned off – for now long before adults have to restrict themselves.
Much cannot be undone
We must end the tendency to shift our responsibilities prematurely onto the youngest. Pandemic protection measures in children should not play a role in the autumn unless a virus variant appears that is significantly more dangerous (for which there is currently no evidence). And that’s not all: Due to the fundamentally low risk that an illness with Covid-19 causes for them, children and young people have made considerable “special sacrifices” for our society in recent years. Today, these “special sacrifices” can be clearly measured in numerous negative consequences for the physical and mental health of our children as well as in massive educational deficits.
Much can no longer be undone. Nevertheless, we owe it to our children and young people to try to make amends of this kind. Just as we make compensation payments to restaurateurs and others affected in their economic activities as a result of our corona protection measures, impairments that have occurred to children and young people must also be compensated for.
So we not only owe the younger generations that we will spare them our measures next autumn. We also owe them compensation for what they have suffered: offers to compensate for disadvantages in development and education. In addition to creativity, enough money must be invested for this; in particular, the education systems must be provided with sufficient financial resources. As a society, we need to remember the rights of our children and respect them again in the right way. If we look back at the pandemic in a few years, the bitter impression should not remain that an entire generation was irreversibly prevented from starting its own life. And we just looked the other way.
Prof. Dr. dr Frauke Rostalski holds the chair for criminal law, criminal procedure law, legal philosophy and comparative law at the University of Cologne and is a member of the German Ethics Council.
Prof. Dr. Nicole Reese teaches general administrative law as well as labor and civil service law at the University of Police and Administration in North Rhine-Westphalia.