Climate Change and Human Rights

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The report issues a set of specific recommendations related to protecting human rights from climate change impacts and responses, including:

• The inclusion in the Paris agreement of a schedule for assessing and revisiting country commitments with the aim of increasing, over time, the ambition of the climate targets set by countries.
• A reference in the Paris Agreement to the effects of climate change on the exercise of human rights and the need to respect, protect, promote, and fulfill human rights in all climate-related activities.
• Ensuring implementation of social safeguards in various climate funds to take into account human rights considerations.

While the report acknowledges that many nations have taken steps towards fulfilling their obligations, it concludes by saying that only through increasing ambition and working collectively on climate change can the international community ensure the protection of human rights for all citizens across the world.

“Climate change is the result of choices made by human beings and has devastating impacts on a wide range of internationally guaranteed human rights—the rights to food, water, sanitation, adequate housing, and health—for millions of people,” said Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“Human rights law imposes affirmative legal obligations on all states to protect human rights from climate harms, particularly the rights of persons in vulnerable situations, and to ensure accountability, including redress, where harms are suffered. We are living in an age of widespread breach of these obligations.”