In a polarized geopolitical landscape, the Human Rights Council remains a critical platform for advancing environmental justice through norm-setting, accountability mechanisms, and civil society participation.
Published March 23, 2026
By Francesca Mingrone, CIEL Human Rights and Climate Change Senior Attorney.
Multilateralism is under strain. Heightened geopolitical tensions, democratic backsliding, and widening inequality have strained global cooperation just as environmental degradation and climate disruption intensify, jeopardizing fundamental human rights within and across borders and generations.
In this fractured landscape, the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) remains one of the few global forums where environmental harm is addressed explicitly as a human rights issue — and where governments, civil society, and Indigenous Peoples can seek accountability.
The three annual sessions of the HRC are among the key moments, both in Geneva and globally, for international deliberation on human rights in a rapidly changing world. As in every recent session, its sixty-first session (HRC61, 23 February – 31 March 2026) brings together Member States, independent experts, civil society actors, and Indigenous Peoples’ representatives to debate pressing global challenges, including climate change, environmental justice, corporate accountability, and the protection of human rights defenders.
The ongoing session underscores both the urgency and the fragility of international cooperation on human rights, especially against the backdrop of a mounting liquidity and funding crisis that is affecting the United Nations (UN) and the broader international human rights sector.
The Human Rights Council in a Fragmented Global Order
Established in 2006 to replace the Commission on Human Rights, the HRC was designed to strengthen the effectiveness, credibility, and universality of the UN’s human rights architecture. Its processes and mechanisms — including thematic and country-specific resolutions, the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), the Special Procedures, and the Advisory Committee — offer formal avenues for constructive scrutiny and engagement by States, civil society, and Indigenous Peoples.
However, as the world becomes more geopolitically divided, the Council’s work reflects broader tensions among States. Voting patterns and positions on key issues within the HRC, including gender equality, civil liberties, and environmental protection, are increasingly polarized. The commitments taken in resolutions are often watered down, and thematic mandates (called Special Procedures) are subject to increased scrutiny and pressure from States during their renewal.
Despite these pressures, the Council remains one of the key global institutions to advance environmental and climate justice, as it continues to address the triple planetary crisis — climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution — explicitly through the lens of human rights. Framing environmental harm as a human rights violation strengthens States’ legal obligations. This approach was reaffirmed by the International Court of Justice in its recent advisory opinion (AO) on climate change, which underscored how climate change threatens legally protected human rights.
Moving the Needle Towards Meaningful Environmental Democracy
The Human Rights Council has a crucial norm-setting role. Over the years, it has helped advance the interpretation of States’ existing human rights obligations. The formal recognition of the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment has been one of the Council’s most significant normative breakthroughs. In October 2021, the Council recognized this right, and, in July 2022, the UN’s highest deliberative body, the General Assembly, echoed this development by recognizing this very right in Resolution 76/300. Such ambitious outcomes were made possible by the leadership of groups of countries – the so-called “core groups” and procedural rules that allow the HRC to pass resolutions by voting (as opposed to by consensus, as applied in some multilateral fora).
The work of the Human Rights Council has informed other multilateral fora, including environmental ones. In 2008, HRC Resolution 7/23 played a key role in ensuring that human rights entered the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), where, from 2010 onward, States finally started to address the linkages between human rights and the climate crisis. Similarly, the integration of human rights considerations in the context of the Global Biodiversity Framework would not have been possible without the HRC’s wealth of relevant resolutions and Special Procedures reports (alongside the work of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which is often mandated by the HRC to prepare reports.) that connected the triple planetary crisis to human rights impacts.
The HRC’s Special Procedures reports also advance the understanding of environmental human rights issues. These reports document human rights harms and provide information regarding relevant legal obligations. Examples of noteworthy reports include the Special Rapporteur on climate’s report on fossil fuels, the Special Rapporteur on the right to a healthy environment’s report on Investor-State Dispute Settlement, as well as the Special Rapporteurs on toxics and the right to a healthy environment’s joint report on “sacrifice zones”.
Our Work at the Council
Over the years, the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) has leveraged the HRC and its mechanisms to:
- Bridge environmental law and human rights,
- Reinforce the nexus between environmental harm, climate change, and human rights violations,
- Strengthening the case that States should be held accountable for inaction on climate change, and that climate measures must be grounded in human rights.
There are three main approaches CIEL uses to advance these objectives.
1. Supporting Norm Development
CIEL’s legal research and advocacy help conceptualize environmental harm within the framework of established human rights obligations and principles. This approach strengthens the legal coherence of environmental rights norms and ensures that Council discussions reflect both scientific evidence and existing legal obligations of States.
CIEL actively participates in the plenary sessions as well as in negotiations on relevant resolutions, advocating for the inclusion of more ambitious elements and bridging the Council’s work with other relevant fora, such as the UNFCCC.
2. Defending and Strengthening Special Procedures
The Council’s Special Procedures — independent mechanisms including special rapporteurs, independent experts, and working groups — are among its most valuable accountability tools. Mandates such as those on the right to a healthy environment, human rights defenders, and climate change, provide unique expertise to continue to bridge environmental law and human rights, and support States in advancing human rights-based climate action. CIEL works with partners to support Special Procedures’ evidence-based reports, defend the independence of mandate holders, and resist efforts to narrow the scope of their mandate. These efforts help preserve one of the Council’s most independent, responsive, and flexible mechanisms for addressing rights violations and emerging threats. Several reports by Special Procedures, such as the abovementioned reports, have significantly advanced the understanding of environmental human rights issues.
3. Advancing Accountability for Corporate Conduct
The transnational nature of environmental harms — from fossil fuel production and consumption to toxic pollution — poses significant governance and accountability challenges.
CIEL continues to engage in negotiations and discussions on business and human rights to underscore both State and corporate responsibilities under international law. This includes participation in ongoing negotiations on a legally binding instrument on transnational corporations and other business enterprises, and the provision of information for Special Procedures’ communications to States and corporations. Integrating corporate accountability into the multilateral human rights discourse is essential for securing effective prevention and protection for affected communities, as well as remedies when harm occurs.
Public Participation and Institutional Legitimacy
One of the refreshing features of the Council’s work — including the current session — is its broad space for civil society engagement compared to other multilateral processes. While CIEL is not itself a frontline organization, its contributions are grounded in close collaboration with affected communities and partners, whose experiences inform its advocacy. Through oral statements, written submissions, and participation in plenary sessions, CIEL helps bring these perspectives into the room, ensuring that deliberations are informed by the lived realities of frontline groups and communities.
At a time when civic space is shrinking across many national and regional contexts, this engagement reinforces the legitimacy of multilateral processes and underscores the Council’s continued relevance as a leading global forum for the promotion and protection of human rights.
What’s on the Horizon?
From geopolitical polarization to institutional resource constraints, multilateralism is under strain. Yet the weakening of cooperative frameworks would leave fewer avenues for accountability when they are most needed.
The Human Rights Council remains a vital platform for advancing environmental rights, protecting defenders, and ensuring that climate action is grounded in human rights. Strengthening this forum — and the participation of civil society within it — will be essential as environmental crises deepen and the demand for accountability grows.
In this context, CIEL contributes actively to reinforcing, defending, and shaping multilateral norms by bridging global governance with the lived experience of frontline communities and rigorous legal expertise.