September 23rd, 2022
GENEVA – Today, the UN Human Rights Committee issued a watershed decision finding that Australia’s inadequate action on climate change violates the rights of the Torres Strait Islanders and requesting that the State provide full reparation for the climate-related harms suffered, including adequate compensation and measures to prevent future violations.
In response to the decision, CIEL issued the following statement:
“We celebrate the victory for Torres Islanders and the NGOs who worked with them as this groundbreaking decision marks a significant step for climate justice and accountability.
This is the first-ever opinion from an international human rights body upholding the State duty to protect people under its jurisdiction from the impacts of climate change and to compensate and remedy climate-related harms.
The decision is a major step for the recognition that the failure to mitigate and adapt to climate change can violate a State’s obligations under international human rights law. It affirms the critical role of judicial and quasi-judicial bodies in promoting accountability and enforcing State human rights duties to address environmental harm.
The Human Rights Committee requests that Australia communicate within 180 days steps taken to make full reparation and to provide remedy to individuals impacted. This precedent bolsters demands for State action on climate-related loss and damage and lays the foundation for future claims by other communities suffering from the impacts of climate change, many of which are irreversible.
While the Committee affirms that the State party is under an obligation to prevent similar violations in the future, it stops short of recognizing what that means in terms of climate mitigation. The State’s duty to protect rights from climate change cannot be satisfied by adaptation measures alone; mitigation is critical. As one of the separate opinions emphasizes, “[i]f no effective mitigation actions are undertaken in a timely manner, adaptation will eventually become impossible.” Yet the Committee declined to address how Australia’s inadequate mitigation measures to date have failed to protect the Torres Strait Islanders and contributed to the harms suffered.
The Committee’s own observations regarding the threat that climate change poses to the right to life and States’ affirmative obligations to protect against harm required it to go further in this decision. While the Committee skirted the issue today, the need to clarify the legal consequences of inadequate mitigation measures and what State action satisfies the duty to prevent further climate harm is not going away, and is sure to arise in future cases.
Six committee members wrote separately expressing regret at the missed opportunity to address mitigation – indicating a growing willingness among many members of the Human Rights Committee to close this accountability gap with regard to the lack of adequate mitigation action. Several committee members also emphasized that the Committee should have found a violation of the right to life, based on the lack of adequate precautionary and preventive measures by the State to address the foreseeable threat posed by accelerating climate impacts.
Given the ever-increasing urgency of the climate crisis, it is imperative for human rights institutions to deliver on their mandate by holding governments accountable and recognizing that State action to reduce emissions from fossil fuel production and use is a prerequisite for the fulfillment of their human rights obligations.
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Media contact:
Cate Bonacini: press@ciel.org, +1-202-742-5847