December 2003
At the Ninth Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (December 10, Milan, Italy), Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), announced that the ICC is considering filing a claim with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights against the United States for the harm global warming is causing to the Inuit. The claim, if filed, will aver that, by failing to curtail its greenhouse gas emissions, the United States has violated the Inuits’ human rights, including their rights to property, culture, and subsistence.
At the CIEL-moderated event Ms. Watt-Cloutier said: “The human rights of Inuit are under threat as a result of human-induced climate change. ICC will defend the human rights of Inuit. We are exploring how best to do this, likely through the Inter-American system invoking the 1948 American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man.”
Melting of sea ice exposes Inuit dwellings to storms and erosion and poses a mortal danger to Inuit hunters and their prey. Thawing permafrost damages buildings, roads, and other infrastructure and harms forests and other Arctic and subarctic ecosystems. Ms. Watt-Cloutier added: “Inuit hunters understand nature’s rhythms and cycles. Their environmental knowledge is detailed and accurate, and is passed down from generation to generation. But many Inuit hunters now find the weather unpredictable and traveling over the sea-ice dangerous. Hunters are being lost through the sea-ice in areas that, traditionally, have been safe.”
CIEL is working with the ICC and Earthjustice to use human rights law to protect the Arctic and its peoples from the impacts of global warming. After extensive legal and factual research, we concluded that the Inuit could present a strong human rights claim and proposed a human rights petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) against the United States, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter.
In June, the ICC Executive Council adopted a resolution authorizing the Chair to develop such a claim. (View resolution at http://www.inuit.org/index.asp?lang=eng&num=244)
We plan to expand this approach to include other indigenous and local communities around the world, with possible actions in United Nations, European Union and other human rights tribunals.
These actions lead to filing a petition before the Inter-American Commission on Human rights in December 2005, and a hearing before the Commision in March 2007.
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