A/HRC/44/48 State-owned databases have been linked and used to categorize people as “at risk” of committing benefit fraud or becoming a criminal. Such systems can have a chilling effect across a whole community because of their lack of transparency, and the difficulty of achieving redress if errors of identification or supposition are made leaves everyone vulnerable to their determinations. 78. When multiple sources of data are combined to rank or score individuals in society 48 with unknown infrastructure and algorithms driving the scoring, people become increasingly fearful of participating in society, not knowing who is scoring them or how. As a result, their right to liberty may be curtailed, social relationships are disabled and they are powerless to challenge the scores attributed to them. That influence on civil rights necessarily has an impact on the access to and enjoyment of social rights. The consequences for mental health and well-being, particularly how they may affect the relationship of the global community with the State and with each other, are profound and urgently require investigation and research. States and non-State actors have human rights obligations to protect the right to health, including mental health, and omnipresent surveillance, enabled by big data, is a fundamental erosion of that right. D. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and its effects on mental health 79. At the time of writing the present report, the world faces a new global threat to public health: the COVID-19 pandemic, which is being addressed through concerted efforts by States and other stakeholders. Measures to contain the spread of the virus have included numerous restrictions on certain rights and freedoms. The impact of the pandemic, its effects and measures are yet to be fully explored. However, important challenges and opportunities related to mental health are expected and these should be taken into account now. VI. Conclusions and recommendations 80. There is no health without mental health and there is no good mental health and well-being without embracing a human rights-based approach. There is an urgent need to invest more in mental health. However, money should not be what is valued most in discussions of global health broadly and in particular mental health. There is an inherent and universal value to supporting dignity and well-being; furthermore, it is a human rights imperative. 81. The first two decades of the new millennium brought many promising changes to the field of mental health. Promotion of good mental health was included in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and there have been impressive worldwide initiatives in advancing all the elements of global mental health: promotion, prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and recovery. 82. However, despite promising trends, there remains a global failure of the status quo to address human rights violations in mental health-care systems. This frozen status quo reinforces a vicious cycle of discrimination, disempowerment, coercion, social exclusion and injustice – it is unacceptable. There is a shifting tide worldwide in how distress, treatment and support more broadly are viewed, which moves far beyond a biomedical understanding of mental health. The global status quo, its institutions and gatekeepers are falling far behind as consensus continues to fracture on how to plot the transformation ahead. Business as usual is no longer politically viable, nor is it compliant with human rights. 83. The call to close the treatment gap focuses largely on the “global burden of mental disorders”, which comes at the expense of human rights. 49 That systemic imbalance leads to ineffective incentives and harmful systemic effects, which also 48 49 18 See Rogier Creemers, “China’s social credit system: an evolving practice of control”, SSRN (22 May 2018). See WHO, “Global burden of mental disorders and the need for a comprehensive, coordinated response from health and social sectors at the country level”, EB130/9 (1 December 2011).