As governments and intergovernmental organizations have recognized, climate change has adverse impacts on a wide range of human rights. Consequently, existing human rights obligations defined under legally binding treaties must inform climate action. These obligations require that climate policies are designed and implemented to effectively protect the rights of those most affected by the climate crisis.
Human rights treaty bodies (HRTBs) — established to monitor the implementation of the United Nations’ human rights treaties — have a critical role to play in informing the understanding of the scope of these human rights obligations in the context of climate change.
At a time when a growing number of national, regional, and international courts are being asked to review the compatibility of States’ climate policies in the context of these human rights obligations, the role of HRTBs is ever more critical.
This Synthesis Note reviews the outputs adopted by HRTBs in 2023 with regard to climate change, complementing our 2022 and 2021 Synthesis Notes, which provided an overview of all relevant HRTBs outputs adopted from 2020 to 2022, and our 2020 Update reviewing developments of the previous years (and complementing the 2019 Update and 2018 Update). This note describes the important role that the HRTBs have continued to play in 2023 to further articulate States’ existing human rights obligations related to key dimensions of climate governance. The Synthesis Note can thus help inform States’ responses to climate change by contributing to clarifying the scope of their legal obligations. The Synthesis Note also highlights some of the pressing issues that could benefit from more proactive engagement by HRTBs and other human rights monitoring bodies in the future, such as the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, loss and damage, carbon markets and offsets, human rights of future generations, international financial cooperation and climate finance, equitable and just transition.
Read the Synthesis Note.
Published on August 15, 2024
Focused Notes available below provide a more specific summary and analysis of the work of five treaty bodies with respect to States’ human rights obligations in the context of climate change in 2023.
