Politicians, including Baroness Jones of the Green Party and Mark Drakeford, who is the Labour leader in Wales, have spoken of the possibility of a 6pm curfew for men. That looks to be a breach of international law and so is something often referred to as illegal.
A curfew is a punishment. A curfew directed at any of us on the basis of gender/sex (or any characteristic protected from discrimination) is a collective punishment of those who have that characteristic. Or as Oxford Public International Law terms it:
‘A collective punishment is a form of sanction imposed on persons or a group of persons in response to a crime committed by one of them or a member of the group.’
Collective punishments are therefore a legal wrong. The law doesn’t stop people holding political views. So, if politicians wish to endorse legal wrongs they can.
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