CIEL participates in OHCHR consultation on Human Rights and Climate Change

November 2008

At a meeting of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), CIEL explains that States have a duty under human rights law to cooperate with the aim to effectively combat climate change and protect human rights.

On 22 October the OHCHR convened an open-ended consultation meeting on the relationship between climate change and human rights in preparation of a OHCHR study on this subject due to be considered by the Human Rights Council at its tenth session in March 2009.

Having worked on the linkage between human rights and climate change for several years, CIEL was invited by the OHCHR to make a presentation and to contribute to the discussion on the interface between climate change and human rights. CIEL, who has been serving as legal counsel to the Maldives over the past years, analyzed the implications of climate change on a host of human rights. CIEL stressed that not only the countries where human rights were impacted had a duty to protect its inhabitants, but that human rights law directed other countries to help protect those inhabitants through international cooperation. In fact, CIEL explained, the duty to cooperate is at the very heart of international human rights law. In the UN Charter, member states "pledge themselves to take joint and separate action in cooperation with the Organization for the achievement of . . . universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all."

CIEL's presentation can be found here.

Other presentations can be found here: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/climatechange/consultation.htm

The substantive submissions received for the OHCHR study can be found here: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/climatechange/submissions.htm

The submission of the Maldives and its annexes can be found here:
http://ciel.org/Climate/Maldives_UN_30Oct08.html

Other OHCHR materials on the topic can be found here:
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/climatechange/index.htm

For more information, please contact:

In Washington, DC:

Marcos Orellana, morellana@ciel.org