The climate change crisis poses a threat to human rights around the world. National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) can play a critical role in responding to the crisis by working to ensure that human rights are protected from the impacts of climate change. Steps that NRHIs can take include: designing effective mitigation and adaptation measures, ensuring that measures are designed and implemented in a way that respects human rights, and that remedy is available when rights violations do occur.
The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) and the German Institute for Human Rights developed a handbook, Climate Change and Human Rights: The Contributions of National Human Rights Institutions, that examines the unique role that NHRIs can play. The handbook presents different forms of action that NHRIs can take concerning climate change and highlights good practices from NHRIs around the world.