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New data from a Transition Minerals Tracker compiled by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) shows that more than 630 allegations of human rights violations have been associated with minerals mining since 2010. Of those, 91 were made in the last year alone.

The tracker monitors human rights abuses associated with the extraction of seven minerals including copper, lithium and bauxite, which is new in this year’s update. These elements are essential for the production of solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and electrification more broadly.

The latest BHRRC data points to widespread violations of Indigenous peoples’ rights – such as forced relocation, water pollution and denial of access to traditional land – as well as attacks on human rights defenders and workers’ rights abuses.

BHRRC also registered 53 allegations of work-related deaths since 2010, with 30 percent of those newly reported in 2023.

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Caroline Avan, BHRRC’s head of natural resources and just transition, said the situation is not improving. “The sector is blatantly failing at protecting those who generate its profits, and this is only the tip of the iceberg,” she said.

“We are probably only capturing a fraction of abuses because we rely on public data and so many issues don’t get reported,” she added. The BHRRC gives companies an opportunity to respond to the allegations it documents.

Just ten companies are associated with more than half of all allegations registered since 2010 – including China Minmetals, Glencore, Grupo Mexico, First Quantum Minerals and Solway Group – while 46% of the total originated in South America.

Allegations of human rights abuses linked to transition minerals by category 

Source: Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

Avan explained that many abuses follow a pattern that begins with environmental violations –  such as water or soil pollution – compounded by inadequate consultation with local communities, which then leads to protracted conflict.

This has been the case at the Las Bambas copper mine in Peru, now owned by MMG Ltd – whose major shareholder is China Minmetals Corporation (CMC) – and formerly controlled by Glencore. It received the most allegations of rights abuses not only in 2023, but across the tracker’s full 13-year monitoring period.

The mine’s infrastructure, activities and expansion plans have led to a series of social and environmental impacts, provoking protests and blockades by Indigenous communities. Most recently, last November, 1,500 workers went on strike to ask for a larger share of profits.

CMC, MMG and Las Bambas have not responded to the BHRCC over the reported allegations.

New global principles

The persistence of human rights abuses in mineral mining is set to attract more attention, with the International Energy Agency estimating that mineral demand for clean energy applications is set to grow by three and a half times by 2030.

The BHRRC’s report notes that the mining sector is under pressure from civil society, Indigenous peoples and global policymakers alike to strengthen human rights protections.

For example, the new EU Batteries Regulation, adopted last July, obliges end users of battery minerals to carry out thorough supply chain due diligence.

“We are seeing the automotive industry asking more of the upstream mining sector, and that is good news,” said Avan. “But we are not seeing enough from the renewable energy sector in terms of asking mineral suppliers to ensure their operations are not linked with abuses.”

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Last month, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched a high-level Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals tasked with developing a set of global principles to “safeguard environmental and social standards and embed justice in the energy transition”.

Guterres said supply chains must be “managed properly” to ensure that developing countries get a fair share of benefits and that the environment and human rights are protected.

“Too often, production of these minerals leaves a toxic cloud in its wake: pollution; wounded communities, childhoods lost to labour and sometimes dying in their work. And developing countries and communities have not reaped the benefits of their production and trade,” the UN chief said in comments at the launch.

“This must change… The race to net zero cannot trample over the poor,” he added. The panel is expected to deliver initial recommendations ahead of the UN General Assembly in September.

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The BHRRC’s Avan told Climate Home it was “concerning that countries in the Global North are rushing to sign strategic partnerships with resource-rich countries in the Global South because they want to secure their mineral supply chains, but the companies who will be involved in delivering those minerals are not asked much in terms of requirements for human rights protections”.

For companies, recommendations from the centre’s new report include adopting human rights policies and giving affected communities access to the benefits and governance of projects.

Avan said government regulation and better business practices are essential “to ensure that the global energy transition is a just one, centred on respect for human rights, fair negotiations and shared prosperity”.

“The alternative is rising resistance, conflict, and distrust – all threatening to slow the pace of the transition,” she added.

(Reporting by Daisy Clague, editing by Megan Rowling)

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It is the first such decision the Green Climate Fund (GCF) has taken since its creation in 2010.

The GCF said on Thursday it had terminated its agreement with project developers after their failure to comply with its rules on environmental and social safeguards resulted in “legal breaches”.

In 2020, the fund committed $64 million to the programme run by the Nicaraguan government and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), which aimed to reduce deforestation in the UNESCO-designated Bosawás and Rio San Juan biosphere reserves.

The GCF said it had not paid out any funds before terminating its support for the project and no activities had yet taken place.

Community groups warned that the project was going to be carried out in reserves being deforested by a massive invasion of settlers that use violence against Indigenous people with impunity due to weak law enforcement action. They worried that the programme – which was to be overseen by state authorities – would worsen those conflicts and fail to protect the rights of Indigenous communities.

Amaru Ruiz, director of the Nicaraguan organisation Fundación del Río, which supported the affected communities, welcomed the decision by the GCF.

“This sets a precedent globally for the functioning of the fund,” he said. “It is also a recognition of the struggle and resistance of the Indigenous people and Afro-descendant communities of Nicaragua, and it shows that there is a window of opportunity to insist on the fact that climate projects must not violate human rights.”

Fuelling conflicts

The decision concludes a grievance process that has lasted nearly three years since a coalition of local and international NGOs filed a complaint with the GCF. They accused the project of fuelling a violent conflict between Indigenous communities and settlers who were grabbing land to farm cattle and exploit resources, as well as failing to consult local people.

The Bosawas Reserve in Nicaragua has been hit by illegal mining and logging despite protected status. Photo: Rebecca Ore

Independent legal observers have documented repeated attacks against Indigenous people in the area with dozens murdered, kidnapped or raped over the last few years.

An investigation by the GCF’s independent complaint mechanism deemed their concerns justified. It found a series of failures with the project that could “cause or exacerbate” violent conflict. The probe also highlighted a lack of due diligence on conflict risks and human rights violations and the absence of free and informed consultations with Indigenous communities before the project’s approval.

The GCF said it was unaware that the project was not in compliance with its policies at the time of its approval and that new evidence had subsequently been brought to light.

Late-stage consultation

Following the internal investigation, the GCF board agreed last July to suspend the project until it addressed local concerns and fully respected the fund’s policies and procedures. It effectively gave the project developers one last chance to fix the problems.

In an attempt to remedy the issues, CABEI carried out a consultation and engagement process with local communities between August and September. The project developer said a total of 5,550 people participated in 69 events across the region.

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But NGOs criticised it as a “sham”, saying participants were only provided with a brochure in Spanish – a foreign language for many Indigenous people – and were given limited freedom to debate the proposal.

“There’s been an increase in militarisation in the territory,” said Ruiz. “At least eight Indigenous community forest guards were detained after they had denounced the situation of encroachment on their territory”.

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Since 2007, Nicaragua has been ruled by an authoritarian regime led by President Daniel Ortega. His administration has been responsible for “widespread and systematic human rights violations that amount to crimes against humanity”, according to the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua.

CABEI detailed in a report sent to the GCF in October the steps that had been taken to make the project compliant with its rules. But the fund’s secretariat, its administrative arm, found the issues were not addressed to its satisfaction and decided to terminate its participation in the programme.

It communicated the decision to its board members at a meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, this week.

Lesson for the future

The GCF secretariat says it is now committed to working collaboratively with CABEI and the Nicaraguan government to “develop a clear strategy to conclude the project in an orderly and responsible manner”. That will include informing people on the ground and “managing the expectations” of the potential beneficiaries.

CABEI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Florencia Ortúzar, a lawyer at the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA), said she hoped the GCF would learn a lesson from this case.

“It is a reminder of the importance of including local communities from the very beginning of project design,” she told Climate Home. “The GCF policies and safeguards exist to prevent those regrettable situations and must be implemented rigorously and consistently.”

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An investigation by the fund’s independent complaint mechanism found a series of failures that could “cause or exacerbate” violent conflict between indigenous people and settlers.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) will not provide any money to the project managed by Nicaragua’s authoritarian regime until it fully complies with the fund’s rules, its board ruled at an annual meeting in July.

This marks the first time the GCF board puts on hold an approved project over human rights concerns. The decision comes at the end of a process that took more than two years since a coalition of local and international NGOs filed a complaint.

But the fund stopped short of entirely scrapping the project, as local activists requested. The Nicaraguan government now has the chance to make it compliant with the GCF rules.

A GCF spokesperson told Climate Home that the matter “has received, and continues to receive, its highest attention”. They added that the fund reserves the right to exercise its legal rights in case the issues are not addressed to its satisfaction.

Human rights abuses

The project, which was approved in 2020, aims to reduce deforestation in the Unesco-designated Bosawás and Rio San Juan biosphere reserves in the Caribbean Region of Nicaragua.

The region is gripped by an increasingly violent conflict between indigenous communities and settlers, who are grabbing land to exploit the forest’s resources and farm cattle.

Independent legal observers have documented repeated attacks against indigenous people in the area with dozens of people murdered, kidnapped or raped over the last few years.

A report by the internal redress body said the complainants’ concerns that the project may fuel further violence were justified.

It also found the project had been approved even though it did not comply with a series of GCF’s policies and procedures. Investigators highlighted the failure to carry out due diligence on conflict risks and human rights violations and to conduct free and informed consultations with indigenous communities before the project’s approval.

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These failures “may adversely impact the complainant(s) and other indigenous communities in the project areas”, the report said.

A GCF spokesperson said the fund was not aware that the development of the funding proposal was not in compliance with its policies at the time of the project’s approval. New evidence brought to light subsequently through the independent investigation showed that some of the information presented by the project proponent, as part of its due diligence, was not accurate or correct, the GCF added.

Bittersweet ruling

Nearly a year after the investigation was concluded, the board has now requested the GCF Secretariat, its administrative arm, to put the project on hold until it respects the fund’s policies and procedures.

The ruling’s summary does not specify if all of the issues raised through the complaint mechanism will need to be addressed.

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The result is bittersweet for the groups behind the complaint.

Florencia Ortuzar, a lawyer at the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA), says that, even if the outcome may ultimately be positive, the decision gives no clarity as to what process the Secretariat will follow. “We do not know which specific issues of non-compliance will be looked into nor how they will aim to fix them”, she added.

Calls for cancellation

Amaru Ruiz, director of the Nicaraguan organisation Fundación del Río, says the ruling validates indigenous populations’ concerns, but he believes the programme should be axed rather than simply improved.

“A project that violates human rights, consultation processes and a series of procedures should be cancelled”, he told Climate Home News. “The problems are substantive, not just formalities”.

The GCF Secretariat will now need to work with the Nicaraguan state apparatus and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, its funding partner on the project, to resolve the issues.

The government of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega has been accused of widespread human rights abuses. Photo: Presidencia El Salvador

The government led since 2007 by president Daniel Ortega has been responsible for “widespread and systematic human rights violations that amount to crimes against humanity”, according to the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua.

Ruiz claims the Nicaraguan regime does not have the political goodwill to play within the rules. “It is only after the financial resources, so I believe it will try to show on paper that the project is now compliant even if that is not the case”, he added. “We will see if the Secretariat acknowledges its previous mistake and will make sure regulations are properly applied now”.

Lack of transparency

The complainants’ worries are compounded by what they described as a lack of transparency during the lengthy redress mechanism.

Investigators concluded the reviews in August 2022 but their findings have only been made public now following the completion of the complaint process. The GCF’s board members discussed the report during three separate meetings before making a final decision nearly two weeks ago.

The discussions happened behind closed doors and public updates on the case were limited. This prompted some complainants to criticise the process as “unfair, non-transparent and deficient”.

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Aida’s Ortuzar told Climate Home News “this is especially concerning as it is the first time a complaint reached the board and it sets a worrisome precedent”.

The report by the redress mechanism also raised concerns over the way the GCF relies heavily on information submitted by project proponents to make decisions on whether to fund them.

“This leaves the GCF extremely vulnerable to policy and safeguards non-compliance that can result in huge reputational risks to the fund”, the investigators wrote.

The article was updated on 27/07 to include comments from the Green Climate Fund received after publication

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The resolution passed today, led by Costa Rica, the Maldives, Morocco, Slovenia, and Switzerland, reaffirms the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment and called on states to protect environmental defenders trying to uphold it. It also calls on UN treaty bodies to promote its implementation.

John Knox, professor of international law at Wake Forest University School of Law and the UN’s former special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, said it marks a turning point from recognising the right “to actually starting to take steps to implement it”.

“It identifies concrete steps to make this right a reality, beginning with protecting environmental defenders and communities facing the deadly impacts of the ongoing triple planetary crisis,” agreed Sébastien Duyck, human rights and climate campaign manager at the Center for International Environmental Law.

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The US had been expected to withdraw its support for the resolution at the last hurdle and to call on others to join it, which would have resulted in a vote. However, it changed its mind following late-night negotiations.

Duyck said the US likely realised that isolating itself on “such an important resolution” would be diplomatically and publicly untenable. “Perhaps they had underestimated previously the resolve of other states but also civil society to see progress on the issue.”

Disassociating from consensus

In a statement to the council today, US ambassador Michèle Taylor, said her nation had “long recognised” the relationship between human rights and environmental protection and continued to support development of a right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment “in a manner that is consistent with international law”.

But she said it would “disassociate from consensus” on the subject because it has “significant concerns” about the resolution getting “ahead of the proper development of such a right”.

The Human Rights Council, made up of 47 member states elected by the General Assembly, has long acknowledged a link between climate change and human rights, with frontline nations carefully building a broad coalition of support on the subject.

The US is currently a member, but has not always been and has accused the institution of bias on a number of previous occasions.

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In 2017, it agreed to support a resolution calling for the protection of human rights from the impacts of climate change following intensive but constructive negotiations over the wording led by Bangladesh, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Four years later the council recognised access to a healthy and sustainable environment as a universal right, followed in July 2022 by a similar landmark resolution by the whole UN General Assembly.

The US was one of several states – alongside the UK – to initially oppose this. But, unlike China, India, Japan and Russia all of which abstained, it ultimately supported the decision – a move described by academics as a “striking exception” to its long-standing resistance to recognise ‘new’ human rights.

However, the US caveated its approval by stating that there is “no legal relationship between a right as recognised under this resolution and existing international law” and said it “does not recognise any change in the current state of conventional or customary international law”.

Last week, the US also joined the whole UN in asking the International Court of Justice to advise on states’ legal obligations to tackle climate change.

But US delegate Nicholas Hill warned the general assembly that “launching a judicial process, especially given the broad scope of the questions, will likely accentuate disagreements and not be conducive to advancing our ongoing diplomatic and other processes”.

‘No legal relationship’

In its latest statement to the Human Rights Council, the US appeared to be trying to head off any suggestion of legal obligations at all.

“Unless and until there is a transparent process through which governments have consented to be bound by such a right, a right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment has not yet been established as a matter of customary international law,” said Taylor.

She added that treaty law “does not yet provide for such a right” and “there is no legal relationship between such a right and existing international law”.

The US has suggested creating an intergovernmental working group to discuss this, but has had little support from other nations.

“I think the United States is out of step with the other countries of the world in suggesting that the right to a healthy environment is not binding as a matter of treaty law or related to other rights that are binding as a general matter,” said Knox.

“That doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily binding on the United States, but it is binding on states that have accepted it; most countries in the world have done so.”

The US was not the only country with concerns about the latest resolution, with the UK, Australia, China and India also voicing some degree of doubt. Russia tried to table a number of amendments, but is no longer a member of the Human Rights Council so was not successful.

Work to be done

Lucy McKernan, deputy director for the UN at Human Rights Watch’s office in Geneva, pointed out that these are all countries that do not recognise the right to a healthy environment in domestic law.

“They’re worried about the idea that… if there is a sort of a recognition at the international level, these rights might then be justiciable at the national level and national courts,” said McKernan.

The resolution, in particular, suggests the right to a healthy environment should be part of the universal periodic review of all UN nations’ human rights records.

McKernan said there was a tension between countries that insist these statements are simply political declarations and those that are trying to evolve the law via UN-level resolutions.

“Even though we have the recognition of the right by two significant bodies there’s still work to be done to ensure all states are moving forward together on this.”

David R Boyd, current UN special rapporteur on human rights and environment, said the last-minute change of heart by the US “avoided a colossal embarrassment”.

“Going forward I really hope that the US will join the overwhelming majority of states that not only support the recognition of this right but are willing to make the transformative changes needed to ensure it is enjoyed by billions of people currently suffering the adverse impacts of the planetary environmental crisis.”

This article was amended to add additional comments from David R Boyd

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The two lawsuits, heard today in Strasbourg, accuse the governments of France and Switzerland of breaching the human rights of their citizens by not doing enough to cut national emissions.

It is the first time climate change has come before the European Court of Human Rights, but is unlikely to be the last.

The lawsuits were filed by a former French mayor and a group of Swiss seniors, all of whom argue that their governments have breached their rights to life and to respect for private and family life under the European Convention on Human Rights.

The judgements could set a “pivotal” precedent for climate action, campaigners told Climate Home News, as they could make states take more ambitious climate action as part of their human rights obligations.

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Elders facing extreme heat

In the first case, an association of 2,038 older women called the KlimaSeniorinnen, as well as four individual applicants, argue that they are particularly vulnerable to climate change.

They presented evidence to the court that older people – particularly women – are more likely to die during heatwaves.

The group, which has an average age of 73, first petitioned the domestic courts for action but its case was dismissed.

Switzerland does not dispute that climate change is real and could affect human health. But the government’s legal team told the court its carbon emissions could not be directly linked to the health of older women and said they were not the only ones affected.

Furthermore, it maintained that its existing climate targets and policies are sufficient and said it should not be asked to do more if it was not technically and economically feasible.

Jessica Simor, a lawyer representing the KlimaSeniorinnen, said Switzerland itself had never assessed the fairness of its climate targets and policies, pointing to independent research by Climate Action Tracker that deems the country’s current efforts ‘insufficient’.

Vidéo : Audience Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz et autres c. Suisse https://t.co/fFghE94vTl | Video: Hearing Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and others v. Switzerland https://t.co/LQsm3aMC56#ECHR #CEDH #ECHRhearing pic.twitter.com/JSJASyX5em

— ECHR CEDH (@ECHR_CEDH) March 29, 2023

Switzerland currently aims to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions by 34% by 2030, which is lower than its formal international commitment of cutting “at least 50%” of all greenhouse gas emissions by the same date.

In 2021, the Swiss government held a referendum to align its domestic target with the more ambitious 50% cut, but voters rejected it.

Marc Willers, a barrister representing the KlimaSeniorinnen, told the court that blaming the referendum was “plainly a bad argument” and claimed Switzerland was responsible for its violations “irrespective of how they came about”.

The KlimaSeniorinnen want Switzerland to cut its domestic emissions by above 60% below 1990 levels by 2030, which they say is more in line with similar nations and the EU itself.

Willers said Switzerland’s approach undermined global trust and efforts to combat climate change. If a nation as rich and technologically advanced as Switzerland does not do its fair share, he argued, “what hope is there that other countries will step up?”

Climate victim?

In the second lawsuit, against the government of France, the former mayor of the commune of Grande-Synthe argues that he is personally vulnerable because his home is at risk from flooding.

Damien Carême, now a green MEP for France, had also brought a domestic case against France to the country’s top administrative court. In 2021, the court ordered the government to act immediately to meet its climate commitments, or risk potential fines.

But Carême is challenging the French court’s assertion that he is not directly affected by the country’s failure to take sufficient action on climate change.

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The French government contends that Carême should not be considered a victim under the law and asked for the case to be struck out.

Diégo Colas, director of legal affairs at the French foreign ministry, told the court that France had recently enhanced its emission reduction measures and compliance with its objectives was already being scrutinised by the domestic courts.

New cases coming

The 17-judge panel will now consider its ruling, which is not expected until next year.

In the meantime, the court will hear a third climate case, filed by six Portuguese young people against 32 countries, including all EU member states, Norway, Switzerland, the UK, Ukraine and Turkey, which has been scheduled for the autumn.

The group, now aged between 11 and 23, claims that government inaction on climate change discriminates against young people and poses a tangible risk to life. It refers in particular to forest fires that killed more than one hundred people in Portugal in 2017 and which were worsened by climate change.

Gerry Liston, senior lawyer at Global Action Legal Network, which is supporting the Portuguese case, said the lawsuits gave the court “power to direct a major acceleration in European action on the climate crisis”.

Sébastien Duyck, human rights and climate campaign manager for the Center for International Environmental Law, described the hearings as a “pivotal moment” in the fight against climate change and said the resulting judgments would be carefully monitored by governments and civil society organisations around the world.

“They have the potential to set an influential legal precedent that would further confirm that states must take more adequate action against climate change as a matter of their human rights obligations,” said Duyck.

If the court finds human rights have been breached, it could open the floodgates to similar litigation before the European Court of Human Rights and national courts in all member states of the Council of Europe, said Annalisa Savaresi, associate professor in international environmental law at the University of Eastern Finland.

NOTE: Expenses for attending the court hearing were supported by a grant from the Foundation for International Law for the Environment

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15-year-old Meera Gaikwad*, who is six months pregnant, knows her life will change forever when she moves 100km to cut sugarcane in Karnataka this season. There is no work at her drought-prone home of Paargaon, a small village in western India’s Maharashtra state.

Gaikwad told Climate Home News that she is afraid she will have to deliver her baby in a hut next to the fields, without access to medical care.

Thousands of girls like Gaikwad migrate from their villages every year to join in the sugarcane harvest from October until April. In total, more than 1.5 million workers leave their homes for the sugarcane fields.

Climate impacts, in particular heatwaves, droughts and floods, are worsening their plight. Women, some of whom are pregnant, cut and package sugarcane in temperatures of up to 46C.

In August and September, Climate Home travelled to the states of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, where most of India’s sugarcane is grown and manufactured. Reporters found women and girls working in in dangerous conditions for up to 18 hours a day, without access to health or sanitation facilities.

Climate Home spoke to dozens of women who have had their wombs surgically removed, in the misguided belief it would help them to cope with the intensive workload.

Thousands of young girls and women migrate from Maharashtra’s drought-prone Beed district each year to harvest sugarcane

Double shift

Climate change is aggravating an already dire situation for women in Maharashtra’s drought-prone Beed district, where farming grinds to a halt for almost eight months due to a lack of rainfall. The region suffered from droughts in four separate years between 2010-2019, according to a government report.

Sugarcane cutting is physically demanding. Women work the fields in all weathers, they told Climate Home – and are also expected to do the heavy lifting at home.

Typically, they wake up at around 3am, two hours before the men, to fetch water and carry out domestic work before heading to the fields at 6-7am. After returning home in the evening or late at night, the women cook dinner for the family and finish off other tasks, such as cleaning and washing clothes.

“The men get some rest, but the women don’t,” said Arundhati Patil, executive member of Marathwada Navnirman Lokayat, an organisation working on socio-economic issues in Beed.

A 2020 study by researchers of Pune-based Symbiosis International University concluded that the working and living conditions of these women “violate basic human rights”. They have to bend for hours, pick up very heavy cane bundles and mount them at risky heights, sometimes in complete darkness at night.

Inadequate healthcare

Many women, like Gaikwad, carry out this backbreaking work while pregnant. They work in all weathers right up until their delivery.

20-year-old Anisha Sharad Bhavale, from Koyal village in Maharashtra, gave birth in a hut near a sugarcane field in 2020. Her baby boy died two weeks later. The nearest hospital was 30km away.

She had borrowed 70,000 rupees ($840) from a labour contractor for her son’s medical care. A week after the birth, she was back at work to start paying it off.

A teenage girl sits on a suitcase in her family’s hut near the sugar fields in Beed, Maharashtra

The unsafe working conditions in the sugar fields also sometimes result in miscarriages. One of Bhavale’s relatives was six weeks pregnant when she tripped and fell into a hole, which led to a miscarriage. Her husband, Sharad Bhavale, said there was no vehicle available to take her to the hospital or a nearby healthcare facility where she could have treatment.

The lack of healthcare and sanitation facilities is a major concern, Patil said. “There is no provision of medicines or doctors that can address their issues.”

A 2020 report by Oxfam India said “public health facilities at the villages are inadequate to address [women’s] ailments”, making medical treatments “impossible”, and prolonging any illnesses they suffer from.

Constant harassment

Gaikwad was married two years ago, when she was just 13. She became pregnant earlier this year. “Until we have a baby, we are considered young and poachable, even after we are married. That is why, we try to become mothers as soon as we are married — to avoid any disgrace to our family,” she said.

Thousands of girls are forced to marry by their parents soon after they start having their period – between 12-15 years of age. According to social activists, parents insist on this to ensure their daughters’ safety and because couples are hired more easily and earn more money in the sugarcane fields.

Thousands of young Indian girls like Meera Gaikwad* migrate from their villages every year, to work as labourers harvesting sugarcane

During their early teenage years, many girls also start working in the fields, said Mahadev Chunche, associate professor at the Kumbhalkar College of Social Work in Wardha, Maharashtra. This is partly to avoid them staying behind at labour tent camps, where parents fear they will be abused and harassed by men, he said.

“If a girl is good at cutting sugarcane, she starts getting a lot of marriage proposals. Single men are on the lookout for life partners as couples get a better advance for working in the fields,” Chunche told Climate Home News. “Marriage [eligibility] is mostly dependent on a girl’s skill in the field rather than her education or how she looks.”

A married couple receives a higher amount as an advance for cutting sugarcane – in the range of 150,000 to 300,000 rupees ($1,800-3,600), whereas a single woman is paid 50,000 to 150,00 rupees ($600-$1,800).

Abuse goes unreported

Sexual harassment and abuse are rife in the sugar fields, the investigation revealed. More than a dozen women and girls told Climate Home, on the condition of anonymity, that they had suffered or witnessed abuse.

“When I stay back in the tent and my parents go to the sugarcane fields, sometimes men come to the hut and say bad things… and harass us. They come when they see I’m alone at home… I feel scared,” a 20-year-old widow, who has one child, told Climate Home.

According to a study by Symbiosis International University in Pune, India, “physical abuse and rapes [by male contractors at the worksite] happen quite often though they are not formally reported”.

Chunche spoke to more than 400 women in Maharashtra for his PhD on India’s sugar labourers, seen by Climate Home News. He said that almost 80% of them told him they faced sexual harassment, were molested or raped by male sugar labourers, drivers and middlemen.

“Usually no one says anything or files a complaint,” Chunche told Climate Home News. “Sometimes the pressure is from the labour contractors not to speak but the main reason is their poverty. They fear that if they report [the abuse], it will bring disrepute, they will get no more work and there will be no one to marry them.”

Whenever such an incident happens, parents view it as a disgrace to the family and choose to marry their daughter off at a very young age, said Gaikwad.

In many cases, teenage girls don’t complain about sexual harassment as they are scared that they will lose their chance of going to school and be forced to sit at home, she said.

The working and living conditions of women working in India’s sugar fields “violate basic human rights,” researchers say.

Choosing hysterectomy

Women working in the sugar industry endure daily pain, as they lift 20-40 kg sugarcane bundles on their heads, including while pregnant or suffering from menstrual cramps.

“When women work long (15-18) hours or they squat in agriculture fields or when they lift heavy weights, they can develop abdominal pain,” said Himani Negi, a Delhi-based gynaecologist who runs a women’s care clinic.

To escape this constant pain, many women choose to have their womb removed. The practice has been prevalent among sugar workers for years. Women in Maharashtra’s Beed district were twice as likely as the state average to have had a hysterectomy, according to analysis of official data by Climate Home News.

In many villages in Ambajogai, a division of Beed district, at least 50-60 hysterectomy cases have been recorded over the past two decades, according to Patil.

Ishmala Raghu Patwade, who is in her mid-40s and has several children, told Climate Home News that she had a hysterectomy three months ago.

“My stomach was hurting. I was going through a lot of pain. My uterus had developed knots because of working in the fields. It had to be removed,” she said. Other women recommended the surgery to relieve her pain.

But the operation didn’t help her. Since having it, she can no longer work or lift any heavy items. As a result, the sole earner of the family now has to sit at home. Her husband Raghu used to also work in the sugarcane fields but stopped five years ago after he got severely injured working in the field.

Misinformation and complications

In 2019, a report by the Maharashtra government found that over 13,800 women (about 16% of the 82,300 surveyed) involved in harvesting sugarcane from the Beed districts had their womb removed in the last 10 years. Most of these women were in the 35-40 age group.

According to a report by the Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management, one of the main reasons women choose to have surgery is to avoid losing wages when pain prevents them from working.

Dr Nitin Chate, associate professor at the Swami Ramanand Tirth Rural Government Medical College in Beed, who comes from a family of sugarcane labourers, blamed misinformation.

“Poverty and illiteracy are two devils,” said Chate. “Due to poor awareness, women choose hysterectomies. After this surgery, many women face a disease called osteoporosis, which is related to weak bones.”

Ishmala Raghu Patwade chose to have a hysterectomy after other women told her it would relieve her abdominal pain

Other common complications include vaginal prolapse, back pain, poor balance and urinary incontinence. “Women should be made aware that this surgery won’t address their pain,” said gynaecologist Negi.

Gaikwad told Climate Home it was her dream to go to university, but she has accepted her reality. “We cut sugarcane, no matter what. Whether there’s sweltering heat, frigid cold, or even if the sugarcane fields are flooded with rain, we have to work in the field to cut the sugarcane. There’s no other option,” she said.

“Do girls like me not deserve any justice?”

*Meera Gaikwad is not the subject’s real name, to protect her identity as a minor.

Reporting by Meenal Upreti, Mayank Aggarwal and Arvind Shukla. Photography by Meenal Upreti. Data visualisation by Gurman Bhatia. The Pulitzer Center supported this project with a reporting grant as part of its Your Work/Environment initiative.

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At least 67 people have been arrested in Cairo and other cities over the past few days, according to the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, in relation to a protest against economic conditions planned for 11 November.

Around Sharm el-Sheikh, the Red Sea resort hosting the conference, security officers are carrying out random ID checks, according to sources on the ground. Egyptians who cannot show formal proof of work or residence are being sent back to their birthplaces. Some have waited six or seven hours at checkpoints around the city, only to be turned away.

While the government has released more than 660 prisoners as part of a “national dialogue”, prominent Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah remains in jail.

His sisters Mona and Sana’a Seif are leading a campaign from the UK to secure the release of el-Fattah and other political prisoners, while the global spotlight is on Egypt.

“Cop27 is our first opportunity for a long time to push for whatever improvements we can get on human rights and particularly push to get as many unjustly detained people out of prison as possible,” Mona Seif told a Twitter Space organised by Human Rights Watch.

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El-Fattah and Seif played prominent roles in the 2011 revolution, when Egyptians rose up in protest against poor economic conditions and political oppression. The movement eventually overthrew president Hosni Mubarak.

Mohamed Lotfy, executive director of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF), described El-Fattah as “an iconic figure who inspired millions of Egyptians” who is now “on the verge of dying”.

El-Fattah’s health is deteriorating after 280 days of hunger strike, his allies report. Earlier this week, he said he would escalate the strike and stop drinking water from 6 November, when the Cop27 summit starts.

If the Egyptian authorities refuse to release him, “a catastrophe is about to happen,” Lotfy warned. “I fear this is going to unleash a lot of anger from the international community, from Egyptians and from everybody participating in Cop27.”

Ajit Rajagopal setting off on his march to Sharm el-Sheikh in Cairo before his arrest (Photo: Ajit Rajagopal/ Facebook)

At least one Cop27 delegate has been caught up in the crackdown.

On Sunday, Ajit Rajagopal, an Indian activist from Kerala, was arrested after setting out from Cairo on a solo climate march to Sharm el-Sheikh. He was questioned and detained without food or water for 24 hours along with his friend, human rights lawyer Makario Lohzy. The pair were released without charges and Rajagopal aborted his march.

The major international event comes as Egyptians are again suffering from a cost-of-living squeeze. Annual inflation reached 15% in September, according to Egypt’s central bank. The Egyptian pound is dropping in value and the government fixed the price of bread.

Seif said the security vetting in Sharm el-Sheikh had become “extreme” and workers had been told not to leave their homes after working hours. “The Egyptian presidency is trying to make sure that whoever is visiting and attending Cop27 does not come in contact with Egyptians,” she said.

Every year, political oppression intensifies around 25 January, the anniversary of the 2011 revolution, said Seif. “The reality every Egyptian living under [president] Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is fearing is the moment Egypt got its PR stunt from Cop27 and all the international community and world leaders left and went back to their country, enormous violence will be unleashed on Egyptians.”

The Egyptian government and the Cop27 team have been invited to comment.

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The Philippines Human Rights Commission is set to confront carbon majors over their climate change impact with hearings in Manila, New York and London this year.

Responding to a petition that seeks to hold 47 companies accountable for Philippine communities suffering from extreme weather, the commission is taking its inquiries overseas.

It is in talks with climate law researchers at Columbia University’s Sabin Center and London’s Grantham Institute about hosting evidence sessions.

Commissioner Roberto Cadiz urged the targeted companies, which include Chevron, ExxonMobil and BP, to engage.

“The reason why we are holding two hearings outside Manila is to make this a very inclusive process,” he told Climate Home News by Skype.

“We do understand that most of the respondent companies are not prepared to travel all the way to Manila to participate…

“We continue to invite the respondents to participate in this process, because if they do not, we might come up with certain recommendations that will be adverse to their interests and they will only have themselves to blame.”

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Since campaigners led by Greenpeace Southeast Asia lodged the petition in 2015, the response from its targets has been muted.

Half of the 47 companies, whose products generated around a fifth of historic greenhouse gas emissions, did not respond. Those that did questioned the commission’s jurisdiction, or argued it was for governments, not private companies, to tackle climate change.

Several international law experts have filed arguments in support of the petition, however. These back the commission’s mandate to investigate private companies over harm experienced by Filipinos and provide evidence to join the dots.

“Most of the companies being investigated have disputed the commission’s right to examine their contribution to climate impacts like hurricanes and heatwaves,” Sophie Marjanac of London-based firm Client Earth told Climate Home News.

“This is a missed opportunity to engage with the commission and prove to people affected by climate change around the world that they are committed to being part of the solution.”

Hearings outside the Philippines “should draw much-needed attention to this global issue”, she added.

While the commission cannot directly impose penalties on the respondents, it has other ways of exerting influence. Cadiz expects to recommend ways they could alleviate the human rights impacts of their operations in future – and shareholders to put pressure on companies to comply. “This is not just a legal proceeding,” he said.

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Holding private companies to account for their climate impacts should be pursued in tandem with government action, Cadiz argued.

“I don’t see any conflict or tension between the two efforts,” he said. “In the end, they all converge on one point, which is trying to determine how climate change – the impacts of climate change – can be avoided or at least mitigated.”

The complaint focuses on investor-owned companies, excluding state-owned companies like the Philippines PNOC Exploration Corp or the Chinese-run CNOOC Ltd, which are considering a joint venture to open new drilling fields in the South China Sea.

The latest wave of climate litigation based on human or constitutional rights is bringing in a broader audience, said Joana Setzer, a researcher at the Grantham Institute.

“It is opening more opportunities for people to engage,” she said of the prospective hearing in London. “Human rights have this transnational component… I think the arguments on this are more persuasive.”

So far, the commission has consulted communities hit by intense tropical storms and environmental changes, gathering stories of how these affected their rights to food, water, health, homes and – in some cases – life.

The next stage is to establish how much of that lived experience can be attributed to climate change, and the extent of the respondents’ responsibility.

Hearings are due to start in Manila in March, with the overseas sessions likely to follow in the second half of 2018.

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The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), which reports to the UN high commissioner on human rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, said Australia’s increasing carbon footprint was “at risk of worsening in the coming years” undermining the country’s pledges to the Paris climate agreement.

In a periodic review of Australia’s performance under a UN treaty on human rights, released this week, the committee noted: “environmental protection has decreased in recent years as shown by the repeal of the Emissions Trading Scheme in 2013, and the State party’s ongoing support to new coal mines and coal-fired power stations”.

In light of this, the committee of 18 international human rights experts encouraged Australia to “review its position in support of coal mines and coal export”.

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The Australian government has remained a staunch supporter of the proposed Carmichael mine project, coal from which will generate more carbon emissions than New York City each year it operates.

On a trip to India in April, prime minister Malcolm Turnbull claimed the project would create “tens of thousands of jobs” for Australians – a claim that has been discredited by Adani’s own experts and a Queensland court.

A government infrastructure fund is weighing an application for a near-$1bn loan to Adani for a railway to transport the coal to the coast.

Australian ministers have often argued the Adani mine is backed by a “moral case” for supplying Indians with cheap electricity. The experts on the CESCR are elected by state parties based on their “high moral character”. They include an Indian representative.

The UN recognises that climate change is a threat to human rights. Coal mining and other highly-polluting industries could therefore be viewed as contravening international treaty obligations.

Aside from curbing coal mining, the CESCR recommended Australia’s government immediately introduce new measures to cut its growing carbon emissions and expand renewable energy production.

Modi and Adani: the old friends laying waste to India’s environment

During the review process, which occurred last month, the chair of the committee Waleed Sadi told Australian officials that the recent decision of the US president Donald Trump to withdraw from the Paris Agreement meant the actions of wealthy countries such as Australia had a broad impact beyond their national borders.

A recent review of the energy system by Australia’s chief scientist recommended the government establish a “clean energy target”. But the concept has been shown to be politically compromised and may be expanded to encourage high-efficiency coal power alongside renewables.

The committee also raised concerns over the disproportionate impact of climate change on Australia’s Aboriginal population and called for the government to engage indigenous peoples when designing policy. The Adani mine is opposed by some indigenous landowners.

In the last review of Australia’s obligations to the covenant in 2009, the committee raised issues over domestic emissions and indigenous peoples, but this was the first time coal mining was singled out.

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Two weeks of discussions began with much uncertainty regarding the role that the US would play after the decision by the US president Donald Trump to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.

After intensive but constructive negotiations over the wording, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Vietnam proposed a resolution for adoption by all members of the Council on Thursday.

Addressing the Council as governments were about to consider the adoption of the text, US representative Jason Mack cleared any doubts about the US position on this resolution.

“As we said previously on this topic, the effects of climate change have a range of implications for the effective enjoyment of human rights. On this basis we join consensus,” said Mack.

The recognition by the US of the importance of continuing work on this issue contrasted with Trump’s speech three weeks ago, which framed the Paris Agreement as an injustice against the US economy.

The US has stood aside in recent international discussions of climate change. Trump’s refusal to offer support to the Paris agreement lead to a split at the recent G7 summit in Italy.

However Mack did raise concerns about references to the Paris deal in the Council resolution. In one of the few contentious parts of the negotiations, the US said the Human Rights Council should not interfere with the formal UN climate negotiations, a risk the US saw as encouraged in the eventual resolution.

Nor would the US brook any language that compelled countries to take steps inside the Paris accord or out.

On the other hand, German ambassador Antje Leendertse, speaking on behalf of the EU, stressed the importance of including considering human rights principles with​in the climate talks.​

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Introducing the text, Duong Chi Dung, permanent representative of Vietnam to the UN in Geneva, said the issue required “a comprehensive approach to the issue of climate change bearing in mind intertwined connection with human rights, including social and economic rights”.

The resolution focused on two specific issues. Firstly, that children are among the groups most vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change. It insisted on the recognition of existing obligations under international law for governments and businesses to protect the rights and best interests of children when taking climate action.

At an event parallel to the negotiations, Marilena Viviani, director of UNICEF’s Geneva office, said “500 million children live in flood-prone areas, 160 million are exposed to severe drought, and 115 million are at high risk of tropical cyclones”.

Governments also addressed the specific challenges related to the protection of the rights of climate-induced migrants.

“With the ever increasing adverse impacts of climate change, these groups of vulnerable people are being even more vulnerable and marginalised” said Bangladeshi representative Robiul Islam. The council mandated the UN to examine challenges and opportunities for human rights protection in the context of climate-related migration.

The recognition by governments of the interlinkages between climate change and human rights required many years of debates and negotiations under the auspices of the UN bodies working on each of these issues.

“The global consensus on this resolution – including on issues that often lead to heated political discussions in other UN fora – indicates that the importance of addressing these linkages is now better recognised by governments” said Yves Lador, representative of EarthJustice to the UN in Geneva who followed these conversations since their inception.

Sébastien Duyck is a senior attorney at the Centre for International Environmental Law.

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Dozens of states spoke at the meeting, none argued that the rights of children were adequately protected under current policies.

The special meeting was convened by the UN Human Rights Council to review how governments protect child rights in the context of climate change. The conclusions will inform the council’s annual resolution on climate change and human rights in June.

In the prestigious room of the council in Geneva, panelists emphasised how governments are currently failing younger generations by not adequately addressing climate change.

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Unicef recently estimated that 500 million children live in flood-prone areas, 160 million are exposed to severe droughts, and 115 million are at high risk of tropical cyclones. Malnutrition – which is often exacerbated by climate impacts – is a contributing factor in 45% of all child deaths. Increased temperatures and associated impacts also exacerbate diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia – three major causes of death in children under five years old.

Additionally, children are particularly exposed to and negatively impacted by air pollution. Three hundred million children live in areas where the air is toxic – a situation contributing to the deaths of nearly 600,000 children under age five every year.

Kirsten Sandberg, a member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child warned the governments gathered for the event: “A child rights approach to climate change is overdue.” She highlighted how existing, universally recognised legal obligations should – if enforced effectively – ensure that children do not bear such a heavy burden as a consequence of climate change.

Climate change is a matter of human rights, agrees UN

Last year, the council agreed to consider climate change and the rights of children in order to assess lessons learned from best practices and to identify opportunities to further integrate child rights in the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Children’s rights are the most widely recognised in the international community. Since its adoption by the UN in 1989, the Convention on the Rights of the Child has been ratified by every single state except for the US, making it the most universally supported of all international human rights instruments. The convention defines a set of rights that every government must protect.

Sandberg highlighted that the Convention on the Rights of the Child defined obligations for every state to protect the rights of children such as the rights to life, health, and adequate housing, as well as to ensure that children are consulted in matters impacting their lives.

Quoting the former Irish prime minister Mary Robinson, Sandberg said: “The world needs a groundswell of people equipped, not only with the knowledge to devise solutions to the climate crisis, but also the vision to see that all people must be included in, and empowered by, the global response to the great challenges of our time.”

Through the Convention on the Rights of the Child, all states have also recognised the right of children to education, including on matters related to the environment.

Governments speaking at the Human Rights Council agreed with Sandberg.  “It is essential to develop child-centred policies in adapting to climate change and mitigating its negative impacts,” the deputy minister of foreign affairs of Vietnam stressed, describing concrete policies developed within the country to protect children in the aftermath of disasters or through specific climate projects.

Ambassador Ahsan of Bangladesh emphasised the role that the Paris Climate Agreement could play to protect child rights, noting the objective of limiting global temperature increase to no more than 1.5C. The ambassador further stressed the importance of taking child-centred approaches, particularly in relation to national commitments and to climate migration during the climate negotiations resuming in Bonn in May 2017.

Many states attending the event also welcomed the recognition of children’s rights in the Paris Climate Agreement or reaffirmed their commitment to better integrate human rights in future climate negotiations – a commitment made formally by thirty-four states that have signed the Costa Rica led Geneva Pledge for Human Rights in Climate Action.

Closing the panel, 16-year–old Kehkashan Basu challenged the ministers and ambassadors gathered in Geneva, stressing that youth around the planet are “demanding the right to live with dignity, because we are the citizens of tomorrow… but we will not live to see tomorrow if our today is not taken care of.”

Sébastien Duyck is a senior attorney at the Centre for International Environmental Law. Follow him on twitter: @duycks

This article has been amended to correct a misspelling of Sandberg.

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A core group comprised of Bangladesh and the Philippines – the two countries having historically spearheaded this area of work of the Human Rights Council – as well as Vietnam promoted the resolution.

“Compared to any time in the past, accomplishing a world of dignity, a world of peace, a world of fairness, a world of justice may remain a far cry if we fail to factor in innovative ways to provisioning human rights of the climate-affected people” said Bangladesh’s Nahida Sobhan, calling on all other countries to support the resolution.

While the Council had already adopted several such resolutions in the past years, this year’s resolution had been negotiated under unprecedented circumstances.

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Last December, all governments had indeed agreed to mention explicitly the importance of human rights in the preamble of the Paris Agreement – which thus became the first global environmental treaty to include such a reference. The reach of a consensus on this issue helped provide a positive context for the preparation of the new resolution.

“Following the inclusion of human rights language in the preamble to the Paris Agreement, there is no longer any room for arguing that human rights do not fall squarely within the climate discussion” Ben Schachter, from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said.

Indeed, a cooperative spirit characterised the negotiations leading to the adoption of the new resolution; with fewer political sparks than experienced in the past.

This context also impacted the content of the resolution, the final version of which includes eleven paragraphs addressing various aspects of the relation between human rights and the UN’s climate body (UNFCCC).

Report: Climate change is a matter of human rights, agrees UN

The resolution welcomes for instance the adoption of the Paris Agreement, urging its rapid ratification and full implementation.

Through this resolution, the Council welcomed the upcoming organization of the COP-22 in Marrakesh and called upon States to “consider, among other aspects, human rights within the framework of the UNFCCC”.

The Council also invited the international community to enhance “cooperation and assistance for adaptation measures to help developing countries, especially those that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change”.

Still, the nature of the interactions between the climate negotiations and the human rights institutions remains a sensible element.

Some governments sought to clarify, while adopting the resolution, their view regarding the role that the UNFCCC and the Council should be playing.

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Prior to offering his country’s support for the resolution, Russian representative Alexey Goltyaev expressed concerns with respect to the eleven references to the UN climate change negotiations contained in the draft resolution.

On the other hand, the NGOs promoting the integration of climate considerations in the work of the UN human rights bodies expect a closer cooperation between two processes in particular in relation to knowledge sharing.

Franciscans International’s Budi Tjahjono, a longtime advocate for a more active role by the Council on the issue, highlighted this expectation.

“With the adoption of human rights language in the preamble of Paris Agreement 2015, the Council is expected to work together with UNFCCC in ensuring the promotion and protection of human rights in climate policy and actions at all level,” he said.

These references also echo ongoing discussions taking place in the climate negotiations. During the last negotiation session in May, some governments have continue to seek a better integration of human rights to support the full implementation of the Paris Agreement.

Uganda and Mexico in particular publically requested the organisation of a specific workshop in order to better understand how human rights obligations and principles should guide the work undertaken under the UNFCCC.

In addition to these institutional linkages, the resolution also considered specific activities to be undertaken by the OHCHR.

Since 2014, the Council has mandated annual events and reports to consider the impacts of climate change on specific aspects of human rights.

This first thematic work addressed the relation between climate change and the right to food in 2015, followed by a focus on the implications for the right to health in 2016.

The Human Rights Council conveyed in March 2016 a panel discussion on the Impacts of Climate Change on the Right to Health.

This event was followed by the preparation of a special report by the OHCHR on the Impacts of Climate Change on the Right to Health. Contents from the report fed into the resolution.

Vanuatu in the wake of Cyclone Pam (Pic: UNICEF)

“We are pleased that the current resolution explicitly takes up one of the recommendations contained in the OHCHR’s analytical study, encouraging States, as appropriate, to integrate policies on health and human rights in their climate actions at all levels, including their national plans of action for climate mitigation and adaptation.” Ben Schachter noted.

Looking forward, the Human Rights Council mandated new actions to be undertaken to further consider the implications of climate change on the rights of the child.

The Council called on all relevant experts and organisations to share information with the OHCHR in order to facilitate the preparation of a special study on this issue next year.

These activities will complement the work of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child which already mandated a day of general discussions to be held in September 2016 with experts and governments on the children’s rights and the environment.

While the adoption of the resolution guarantees that the Council will continue its substantive work on the protection of human rights in the context of climate change, some civil society voices now call on the OHCHR to up its game internally.

“The role of the Council in relation to climate change needs to be strengthen by establishing a more permanent human rights and climate change desk within the OHCHR,” Budi Tjahjono commented.

“This would facilitate in mainstreaming the work on human rights and climate change within the OHCHR”.

Sébastien Duyck is a researcher at the Arctic Centre with a specific focus on environmental governance and human rights and a project attorney with the Centre for International Environmental Law. Follow him on twitter @duycks

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Human Rights Council chamber, Geneva (Pic: UN Photos)

By Sébastien Duyck in Geneva

Last Thursday the Human Rights Council sent a strong signal to the ongoing climate negotiations by adopting by consensus a new resolution on climate change and human rights.  

The resolution, championed by Bangladesh and the Philippines, emphasizes the importance of addressing the adverse consequences of climate change for the human rights of all, and in particular of those most vulnerable.

It also stresses the importance of enhanced action and cooperation on adaptation.

Additionally, the resolution calls for the Council to consider next spring how climate change adversely impacts the efforts of states to promote and protect the right of everyone to the highest standards of physical and mental health.

The document also mandates the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to prepare, together with relevant international organizations, a report on the subject.

Comment: Human rights focus can strengthen climate deal 

Whereas attempts to adopt a similar resolution failed last year, Bangladesh and the Philippines managed to secure very broad support for the resolution this year, as over 100 states – developed and developing alike – accepted to co-sponsor the resolution.

And while it is the fourth resolution adopted by the Human Rights Council on the matter, the implications of this adoption five months before the Paris climate conference should not be underestimated.

When introducing the draft resolution to the Council, Ambassador Shameem Ahsan (Bangladesh) emphasized the importance of the adoption of a resolution on this topic this year.

“The timeliness of this resolution cannot but be stressed as the world witnesses growing climatic vulnerability while walking on developing a robust and legally-binding outcome this December in Paris”, he said.

Bluffer’s guide: UN climate talks and the Paris deal

The resolution includes several references to the provisions of the UN Framework Convention and Climate Change and to a decision adopted in 2010 under the aegis of the UNFCCC, and welcomes the upcoming Paris climate conference.

The adoption of this resolution by consensus might thus inform the ongoing climate process.

Climate negotiators are indeed contemplating whether to refer explicitly in the Paris agreement to the importance of integrating human rights to all climate-related actions.

Additionally, they are considering how to acknowledge the circumstances of the countries must vulnerable to climate change.

The resolution does not make any specific suggestions with regards to the outcomes of the Paris conference, but some countries expressed concerns about risks that the human rights council might, in the words of the US Representative to the Human Rights Council David Sullivan, “intrude on expert climate change negotiations taking place elsewhere.”

Legitimacy

These concerns highlight the political difficulties associated with ensuring coherence between two international legal frameworks and the importance for states to consider the linkages between their human rights obligations and the ongoing climate negotiations.

The “Geneva Pledge on Human Rights in Climate Action” constitutes one ongoing effort to address these difficulties.

Launched in February under the leadership of Costa Rica, the pledge constitutes a voluntary commitment by signatory states to strengthen expertise on the interplay between human rights in climate change. 20 countries have signed the Pledge so far.

The fact that the Human Rights Council has now acknowledged this initiative in last week’s resolution will contribute to increase the legitimacy and visibility of the pledge, potentially prompting more states to join these efforts.

Cecilia Rebong, Permanent Representative of the Philippines to the UN, commented that “the adoption of this resolution by consensus brings out a message, loud and clear, that the UN Human Rights Council has one voice in addressing the adverse impacts of climate change”.

The coming months will tell us whether this unity can be replicated in the context of the ongoing climate talks as negotiators will decide whether the Paris climate agreement can contribute to addressing climate change while promoting human rights.

Sébastien Duyck is a researcher at the Arctic Centre with a specific focus on environmental governance and human rights. Follow him on twitter @duycks

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In 2010 a severe drought left 7.1 million Nigeriens without adequate food (Pic: UN Photos/Phil Behan)

By Manuel González-Sanz, Marc Limon, Cecilia Rebong and Mary Robinson

Climate change was top of the agenda last month at the UN’s leading human rights body.

Following great efforts by a small group spearheaded by Bangladesh and Philippines, the Human Rights Council dedicated the issue an entire day at the start of its programme of work.

Some parties to the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change are also considering the human rights dimensions of climate change and new initiatives are underway to improve on policy integration between both agendas, which should strengthen each.

A growing number of states, UN experts, NGOs and others have been stepping forward to further energise this agenda.

The hope is that any new international agreement reached at Paris–the critical next climate change summit this December–can both uphold rights and be strengthened by them.

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Eight years of Human Rights Council work on climate issues and a string of dedicated resolutions have established the clear recognition that changes in the climate do undermine a range of internationally-protected human rights.

Recent analysis pointed out that 45 countries have now made explicit references to the human rights impact of climate change in their national reports to the Universal Periodic Review, the UN’s peer review process for member states human rights records.

Human rights known to be undermined by the effects of climate change include access to water, rights to food, to health, to housing, and to a healthy environment, and even the to self-determination and to life.

Infringements may occur every time severe drought deprives a family of drinking water.

When shrinking growing seasons mean there is less to eat. When unusually extreme heat waves lead to increased mortality rates. When increasingly severe storms and floods destroy homes and livelihoods.

Effects are taking hold on every continent worsening inequalities and injustices by affecting those already in vulnerable situations the most: the elderly, women and children, and the poor who are also least responsible for the harm to fundamental human rights.

The expansiveness of these injustices has firmed our belief that climate change may constitute the most serious challenge to the fulfilment of human rights in our world today.

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For these reasons, the Paris climate agreement will have a determinative impact on the lives, prospects, hopes, dignity and rights of millions of people around the world.

During the key Lima conference in December last year, therefore, the entirety of the UN’s 76 mandated human rights experts urged states to integrate human rights standards and principles into the Paris agreement.

In 2010 the climate talks in Cancún did actually acknowledge “a range of direct and indirect implications for the effective enjoyment of human rights”. Human rights language does also now figure in the current negotiating agreement texts for the Paris summit at year’s end.

The human rights community is speaking with one voice on these matters because the practical benefits of rights perspectives for climate policy are plain to see.

By way of example, one key decision facing Paris is to agree on a strengthening or not of the 2 degree Celsius temperature goal (to 1.5 degrees).

Expert consultations informing this decision would benefit from the inclusion of human rights perspectives to ensure that the rights of those affected are duly considered should warming exceed 1.5C.

Protection of basic human rights should also be among the factors considered by policy-makers, donors and international groups when selecting, for example, which response actions to fund or prioritize first from the limited resources available.

Procedural rights are indispensible to the effective design and implementation of policies at all levels, such as, among others, rights of access to information or community consultation and/or participation of stakeholders in decision-making.

Finally, strengthening human rights safeguards and institutions also promotes full enjoyment of the many rights affected by climate change and compliments efforts to ensure the resilience of populations grappling with complex environmental challenges.

Growing support

These were precisely messages resonating at an informal policy debate on this topic, sponsored by the Climate Vulnerable Forum that we all took part in ahead of the full-day discussion within the Human Rights Council.

Interestingly, a number of climate negotiators have been increasingly open about their need for capacity building and tools to ensure better integration of human rights expertise into their work.

They requested human rights experts for help with that at a Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice Foundation dialogue that brought together human rights and climate communities during the last round of Paris prep talks in Geneva in February.

Another development at that round was the “Geneva Pledge for Human Rights in Climate Change”.

The Pledge aims to address climate policy making needs by promoting collaboration between human rights and climate experts at both international and national levels, inclusive of collaboration between the UN’s Human Rights Council and climate convention.

Sponsored by Costa Rica, 20 governments already joined the Pledge, Germany and Switzerland being the latest signatories.

These and many other efforts in civil society will help to bring legitimacy as well as effectiveness to a new world climate regime.

What is certain is that the Paris climate summit will not only be one of the most important environmental conferences ever held, it will also have one of the greatest effects for the future of human rights.

Any new agreement should of course uphold human rights–which is no small feat. Increasing numbers of states also see human rights as a means of improving the design and implementation of policies that will enable the Paris deal’s effective realization.

Manuel González-Sanz, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Costa Rica

Marc Limon, Executive Director of Universal Rights Group

Cecilia Rebong, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Philippines to the United Nations at Geneva

Mary Robinson, President of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice

This article is one of a series on dealing with climate vulnerability, developed in partnership with the UN Development Programme and the Climate Vulnerable Forum. The themed blog series focuses on communities that are particularly vulnerable to the droughts, floods and sea level rises brought by a changing climate. It presents a range of expert views on how different groups are rising to the challenge.

The post Human rights focus can strengthen Paris climate deal appeared first on Climate Home News.

European Parliament building in Strasbourg (Pic: Flickr/Emiliano)

By Megan Darby

Indigenous people in Guatemala have been “criminalised” for opposing a hydroelectric dam financed through the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism, European Union lawmakers heard on Tuesday.

Local activist Maximo Ba Tiul said his people were not consulted on the construction of the Santa Rita plant.

Three people were killed, 50 injured and 30 arrested in a police crackdown on peaceful protest last year, according to Carbon Market Watch.

At an event in the European Parliament, human rights groups urged MEPs to make sure future climate finance comes with safeguards against such abuses.

“Santa Rita dam is a really terrible example,” said Eva Fitzmoser, of Carbon Market Watch. “There are a lot of cases like this.”

Protesters of Barro Branco dam in Panama faced similarly violent repression, she reported, while CDM-backed “clean” coal projects in India threatened the health of local people.

While the CDM was not responsible for the alleged abuses, Carbon Market Watch argues it should withdraw credits from any project associated with violence against protesters.

Report: UN carbon market fights for its future at Lima talks

The CDM was conceived as a way for developed countries to “offset” some of their obligations under the Kyoto Protocol by funding low carbon projects overseas.

As developing countries are increasingly expected to shoulder some share of responsibility for emissions cuts, carbon offsetting has given way to climate finance.

Developed countries have promised to mobilise US$100 billion a year by 2020 to help the world’s poor with low carbon development and adapting to climate change.

The Green Climate Fund has raised US$10 billion from governments and its board meets this week to discuss ways to leverage more from the private sector.

Comment: What next for the Green Climate Fund?

Meera Ghani of CIDSE, an international alliance of Catholic development agencies, raised concerns about accountability.

“There is little accountability, there is little transparency and little ability to see how it impacts people on the ground,” she said.

“We need to make sure any private finance is held to the same standards as public finance would be.”

Heidi Hautula, Green MEP, said: “We realise that some actions on climate change are creating actually very serious violations of human rights…

“The international financing institutions bear great responsibility for addressing this issue urgently.”

Countries meet for a development finance this July, to set sustainable development goals in September and strike a climate deal in December.

“All these occasions can be used to stress that it is urgent and vital to introduce a human rights-based approach to mitigation and adaptation to climate change,” she said.

Interview: Mary Robinson on climate change and human rights

Four European countries – France, Ireland, Sweden and Germany – have signed up to last month’s Geneva Pledge, promising to promote human rights in a global climate deal.

Antonis Alexandridis, an official in the European External Action Service, said the EU was developing an action plan to “connect a rights-based approach with a global agenda”.

Human rights are already embedded in the EU’s approach to development cooperation, he said. They are planning extend that to other issues in a way that will “answer the Geneva Pledge”.

The post MEPs urged to back human rights safeguards on climate finance appeared first on Climate Home News.

Mary Robinson on a visit to Somalia in 2011 (Pic: Flickr/Jennifer O’Gorman)

By Megan Darby

When she was UN high commissioner for human rights (1997-2002), Mary Robinson admits, climate change was “not at the forefront” of her mind.

It was not until later, visiting African countries under her Ethical Globalization Initiative and as honorary president of Oxfam, the link became apparent.

People would tell her about the rainy seasons not coming on time and the impact that had on their livelihoods.

“When I read up the science, I really was faced with something that was so much more urgent and significant than even the everyday human rights crises I was dealing with as commissioner,” she tells RTCC.

Now, as a special envoy on climate change for UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, she deals with people steeped in science and environmental concern but less aware of human rights.

With the Mary Robinson Foundation, she aims to bring the two together under the banner of “climate justice”.

And she helped to broker last month’s Geneva Pledge, signed by 19 countries, to bring human rights into the global climate deal due this December in Paris.

Led by Costa Rica, the pledge is backed by Latin American, European and small island developing states, Uganda and the Philippines.

Comment: As sea levels rise, climate change threatens entire Pacific cultures

“We cannot overlook the injustice faced by the poorest and most vulnerable people who are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change,” it reads.

“In a transition to a low carbon economy we want to ensure that no one is left behind.”

That means prioritising access to clean energy for the 1.3 billion people worldwide who have no electricity and the 2.7 billion dependent on dirty stoves for cooking.

“For poor countries, the most important thing is development, but development does not have to be linked to fossil fuels,” says Robinson.

She hopes solar panels can do for energy what mobile phones have done for communications across Africa – “leapfrog” the giant, centralised (and in this case dirty) infrastructure phase of development.

Report: Solar closing in on cost of coal-fired power – Deutsche Bank

Human rights and climate action do not always rub along smoothly. Some major hydropower and forest carbon projects, for example, bring big emissions savings, but come into conflict with indigenous claims on the land.

Robinson does not recognise a trade-off: “Having a good sense of respecting human rights is much better for good and effective climate policy. Mistakes are made if you don’t have regard to human rights in climate action.

“If you get into corn ethanol and drive up food prices, that is a bad policy.”

Nor does she accept that the climate justice argument, which implicitly puts the onus on developed countries to act, provides cover for emerging economies like China to resist greenhouse gas emission cuts.

“If you come to the issues from a perspective of equity and justice, the impacts of climate are on the poorest countries,” she says.

While the developed world generated most historic emissions, emerging economies have a “major responsibility now”.

As for the suggestion that human rights risks overloading an already politically fraught deal, she says that Paris will set the framework for decades to come.

“I believe that as time goes on, we will increasingly be aware of the immediate and long term negative impacts on human rights.”

Analysis: From Kalimantan to Lima, where do women stand in climate?

Robinson, who as president of Ireland advocated for access to contraception – a controversial issue in the deeply Catholic country – is also adamant the Paris deal must speak up for women.

“Climate change does have very strong impacts on the ground, particularly in African and South Asian contexts.

“If you undermine livelihoods because of drought and flooding, who picks up the pieces? Who walks further to find water that isn’t contaminated?

“Because of the differential roles, it has a very strong gender impact. We need to promote gender equality in the climate context just as we need to promote it in the sustainable development context.”

Saudi Arabia has resisted such language, she notes, but it is already embedded in the sustainable development goals to be agreed in September. “They need to think it through.”

Robinson’s five grandchildren will be in their forties in 2050, a long range milestone for many climate plans.

She hopes Paris can set emissions on a path so they have “a reasonable world, that will be more affected than our world but will be liveable”.

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Kiribati’s population is expected to face increased threats as climate change causes oceans to warm and sea levels to rise (Pic: AusAID/Flickr)

By Sebastien Duyck 

Just three weeks after the conclusion of the most recent climate negotiations, Geneva has once again offered a space for governments to consider how to address the human rights implications of climate change.

As the issue recently emerged as one of the elements that many countries wish to see integrated to the Paris climate agreement, these discussions provided insights on opportunities for states and UN bodies to better address this issue in the coming months.

Last Friday, the Human Rights Council hosted two high-level panels dedicated to the issue of human rights and climate change, with specific focus on the importance of international cooperation and on the impacts of climate change on the exercise of the right to food.

Representatives from small islands states called for urgent action to mitigate climate change, pointing at the fact that climate change threatens the progress made with the promotion of human rights.

The prime minister of Tuvalu Enele Sopoaga warned that climate change will worsen existing inequities in world already riven with inequality, poverty and conflict. Tuvalu, the prime minister warned, has neither the resources nor the capacity to cope with these impacts.

Kiribati’s President Anote Tong reminded the Human Rights Council that, despite all the efforts by his government, climate change remains an existential threat to his people.

“Who do we appeal and turn to for our people’s right to survive?” president Tong asked the Council. “If there is a major challenge on human rights that deserves global commitment, leadership and collaboration, this is the one: the moral responsibility to act now against climate change.”

Kiribati president Anote Tong (Pic: UN Photos)

Both Sopoaga and Tong challenged the Council to consider how the international community should respond to the climate crisis and to urge more strongly for climate action in order to protect the rights of the most vulnerable people.

Other speakers discussed in their interventions the benefits of integrating human rights into climate policies. UN Special Envoy on Climate Change (and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) Mary Robinson emphasized that a “human rights framing to our development and climate responses can maximize the potential for inclusion, participation and equality”.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, insisted more specifically on the importance to respect the rights of indigenous peoples, in particular land rights and participatory rights, when designing climate policies.

Quoting the fifth assessment report from the UN’s IPCC climate science panel, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz also highlighted that “indigenous, local, and traditional knowledge systems and practices, including indigenous peoples’ holistic view of community and environment, are a major resource for adapting to climate change, but these have not been used consistently in existing adaptation efforts”.

Comment: As sea levels rise, climate change threatens cultures 

The panels were followed by an interactive dialogue with representatives from governments and civil society.

Several common threads emerged from this discussion, including the importance to fully implement the right of the public to take part in decision-making related to climate change, the recognition of the impacts of climate change on economic and social rights, and the importance to consider the linkages between the need to address climate change while protecting the right to development.

Several speakers also spoke in favor of two specific proposals for UN institutions: the importance to include strong references to human rights in the Paris 2015 climate agreement and the opportunity for the Human Rights Council to nominate a UN special rapporteur on human rights and climate change.

Germany also announced during the panels that the country would join the “Geneva Pledge on Human Rights and Climate Action” signed by 18 countries during the most recent round of climate negotiations.

However, the impact of the high political stakes related to the preparation of the Paris Climate Agreement could also be felt throughout the panels.

The interventions by most countries reflected mainly well-entrenched positions in the Council and at the climate negotiations.

The United States in particular suggested that attempts to push for the inclusion in the climate negotiations of references to the work of the Human Rights Council could lead to the “sabotage of the 2015 climate agreement”, a statement that many participants to the session considered out of tone with the discussions.

In depth: UN climate change talks & the road to Paris

The panels were followed by the presentation, on Monday, of the report of the UN Independent Expert on Human Rights and the Environment John Knox.

In his presentation, Prof. Knox emphasized that climate change is likely the most serious threat to the enjoyment of human rights.

Referring to the Geneva Pledge as an example of a good practice to better integrate human rights and climate policies, he challenged relevant UN bodies, such as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNEP and UNDP, to establish focal points for human rights and climate change.

The ongoing discussions in Geneva this week are not expected to lead to immediate concrete results. These exchanges could nevertheless provide additional momentum when related sessions will resume in June, both in Geneva and in Bonn.

For the first half of the month, UN climate negotiations will continue to advance work towards the Paris climate agreement.

Momentum

Several governments having insisted last month on the need to insert human rights language in the negotiating text, the June meeting of the climate talks will be crucial to determine whether this proposals are retained in the draft agreement.

Upon the closing of the climate negotiations in Bonn, the Human Rights Council will gather once again in Geneva to consider, among other matters, the adoption of a new resolution on human rights and climate change.

Over the past two months, Geneva offered two opportunities for governments to deepen their understanding of the interplay between human rights and climate action.

The coming months will now be critical to determine whether, through the UN climate body and the Human Rights Council, states are willing to commit to take steps towards ensuring that climate policies address climate change in a way that promotes human rights at the same time.

Sebastien Duyck is a researcher at the Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law, University of Lapland, with specific interests in human rights and climate change. Follow him on twitter @duycks

The post Climate change threatens human rights, Kiribati president tells UN appeared first on Climate Home News.

While the pledge of loss and damage funds at the UN climate conference represents a small victory for developing countries, the outcomes of Doha are symptomatic of the lack of the political leadership and ambition that has been shown on climate change.

Too many opportunities have passed when we have failed to create a path from recognising the causes and costs of climate change to delivering the funds and the action to solve these.

Developing world infrastructure is often incapable of coping with extreme weather events. (Source: UN/Tim McKulka)

These collective failures on climate change mitigation and adaptation are resulting in more and more people being pushed into poverty.

Declining incomes and opportunities and stressed or over-utilised and increasingly fragile natural resources are leading to critical impacts on food security, nutrition, health and well-being – the fundamental tenets of shared international human rights commitments.

In response to Doha EJF has launched a new report, A Nation under Threat, which examines the impacts of environmental change on human rights and migration in Bangladesh, one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world.

It documents the significant damage to vital infrastructure, widespread devastation to housing, reduced access to fresh water for drinking, sanitation and irrigation, and rising poverty and hunger.

It documents how flooding and storms, and the gradual decline in environmental security, have become major driving factors displacing people from their homes in rural south-west Bangladesh to rapidly growing urban slums.

This kind of forced migration has now become a global human rights issue. Last year weather-related disasters, mainly floods and storms, displaced 13.8 million people worldwide.

For three consecutive years (2008, 2009 and 2010), weather-related disasters like floods and storms displaced more people than wars. These are the new refugees, “climate refugees” driven from their homes by environmental insecurity.

Unlike refugees fleeing conflict or persecution, however, climate refugees have neither the recognition nor protections of refugees fleeing conflict under international legal definitions. The term “climate refugee” is neither defined nor recognized by international law.

As a result, millions continue to suffer an increasingly brutal daily struggle while glacial political debates on terminology – whether to call these people climate refugees or environmentally-displaced persons – play out, when what we should be focusing on is how we can protect the rights of vulnerable people.

Humanitarian crises like the tragic situation in East Africa demonstrate that reactive approaches to environmental disasters are likely to be neither the best option nor a sustainable solution; it is staggering that EJF has worked with people in their twenties who were born in Kenya’s Dadaab camps as refugees.

Hurricane Sandy showed how even the most powerful country in the world can struggle to cope with the effects of climate change. (Flickr/SnapnPiks)

Even among the wealthiest nations the capacity to deal with these situations can be absent. When Hurricane Sandy struck the best prepared, wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth (the USA) it rendered 40,000 people homeless in New York City alone.

We clearly need to plan early and pre-empt crises. We need to build resilience in those areas which will experience the worst impacts of climate change and have limited capacity to adapt. We need to take preventative measures to protect the stability of fragile states, like Somalia, which are extremely climate vulnerable.

We need to develop synergies between economic, environmental, social and human rights frameworks, goals and strategies to mitigate the potentially disastrous and growing impacts of climate change.

Although the negotiations have resulted in a formal acknowledgement from the USA and other developed nations that there will be a bill to pay for the havoc that will come from climate change, I am cautious about how useful compensation will be in protecting the rights of people living on the frontlines of environmental change.

Our leaders must acknowledge that climate change is a human rights issue: that it has become one of the major challenges to the basic human rights to life, food, health, water, housing and self-determination. We need leadership and action, now.

Steve Trent is the Executive Director of the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF). EJF is a UK-based NGO working internationally to protect the environment and defend human rights.

EJF’s report, A Nation under Threat: The impacts of climate change on human rights and forced migration in Bangladesh was launched, with the support of actor Ashley Jensen and Members of the European Parliament Jean Lambert and Ska Keller. For more information, visit www.ejfoundation.org/climate

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