Triage and the Underlying Principles of Discrimination Law

The paper aims to demonstrate how applying the underlying principles of discrimination law when adopting triage protocols can be useful for ensuring that we pay due attention to existing social inequalities, thereby according proper weight to equality as one of the guiding values or principles in the context of disaster triage. The paper starts by defining the concepts of triage and triage protocols. It demonstrates that the regulation of triage has an important legal dimension and outlines some potential legal issues that are relevant in the context of triage. The body of the paper then narrows its focus to one such issue, i.e. the potential conflict of triage protocols with human rights, particularly with the prohibition of discrimination. In order to provide a foundation for a comprehensive understanding of the role of equality in triage protocols, the authors examine how the law conceptualises equality. To this end, the authors provide illustrations as to the way in which the law imposes the requirement of equality, whom it protects from discrimination, in what way, and why.