Marcos A. Orellana (born 1971) is an expert in international environmental law, a professor at George Washington University in the United States and, since 2020, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights. He holds dual Chilean and U.S. nationalities. [1]
Born in Santiago, Chile, Orellana studied law at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile from 1990 to 1996. He then began his master's degree at the American University in Washington, D.C., United States. [1]
Orellana advises civil society organisations worldwide on environmental law and climate justice issues. He was also legal advisor to the President of the 25th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. [2] Since 2020, he has been the UN Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights. [3]
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is a department of the United Nations Secretariat that works to promote and protect human rights that are guaranteed under international law and stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The office was established by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 December 1993 in the wake of the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights.
The United Nations Prizes in the Field of Human Rights were instituted by United Nations General Assembly in 1966. They are intended to "honour and commend people and organizations which have made an outstanding contribution to the promotion and protection of the human rights embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in other United Nations human rights instruments".
Special rapporteur is the title given to independent human rights experts whose expertise is called upon by the United Nations (UN) to report or advise on human rights from a thematic or country-specific perspective.
Juan E. Méndez is an Argentine lawyer, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and a human rights activist known for his work on behalf of political prisoners.
Manfred Nowak is an Austrian human rights expert, who served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture from 2004 to 2010. He is Secretary General of the Global Campus of Human Rights in Venice, Italy, Professor of International Human Rights, and Scientific Director of the Vienna Master of Arts in Applied Human Rights at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. He is also co-founder and former Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights and a former judge at the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2016, he was appointed Independent Expert leading the United Nations Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty.
Philip Geoffrey Alston is an Australian international law scholar and human rights practitioner. He is John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, and co-chair of the law school's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. In human rights law, Alston has held a range of senior UN appointments for over two decades, including United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, a position he held from August 2004 to July 2010, and UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights from 2014-2020.
Frank La Rue is a Guatemalan labor and human rights law expert and served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, from August 2008 to August 2014. Along with American human rights attorneys Anna Gallagher and Wallie Mason, Mr. La Rue is the founder of the Center for Legal Action for Human Rights (CALDH) and has been involved in the promotion of human rights for over 25 years. He was nominated for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize by Mairead Corrigan, Northern Irish peace activist and 1976 laureate. Mr La Rue was previously the executive director of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Europe. He has also served as Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information at UNESCO.
Rosignano Solvay is a frazione of Rosignano Marittimo, Tuscany, Italy, located some 25 km from Livorno.
Christoffel Hendrik Heyns was a Professor of Human Rights Law, Director of the Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa at the University of Pretoria and a South African member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee. He served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions from 2010 to 2016. Heyns was a visiting professor at American University Washington College of Law's Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (2006–2012).
Rajsoomer Lallah was a Mauritian lawyer and judge who played a leading role in International Human Rights cases.
Human rights and climate change is a conceptual and legal framework under which international human rights and their relationship to global warming are studied, analyzed, and addressed. The framework has been employed by governments, United Nations organizations, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, human rights and environmental advocates, and academics to guide national and international policy on climate change under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the core international human rights instruments. In 2022 Working Group II of the IPCC suggested that "climate justice comprises justice that links development and human rights to achieve a rights-based approach to addressing climate change".
Agnès Callamard is a French human rights activist who is the Secretary General of Amnesty International. She was previously the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council, and the former Director of the Columbia University Global Freedom of Expression project.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran is a United Nations Special Rapporteur whose mandate is to monitor and investigate human rights violations in Iran. The current Special Rapporteur is Mai Sato. She is the seventh special rapporteur to Iran, following the tenures of Andrés Aguilar (1984–1986), Reynaldo Galindo Pohl (1986–1995), Maurice Copithorne (1995–2002), Ahmed Shaheed (2011–2016),, Asma Jilani Jahangir (2016–2018) and Javaid Rehman (2018−2024).
François Crépeau, is a Canadian lawyer and Full Professor at the Faculty of Law at McGill University, as well as a former director of the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism.
Fatma Zohra Ouhachi-Vesely is an Algerian woman who was the first United Nations special rapporteur on toxic wastes from 1995 to 2004. Prior to her position, she was a Special Rapporteur in the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities from 1989 to 1994.
The right to a healthy environment or the right to a sustainable and healthy environment is a human right advocated by human rights organizations and environmental organizations to protect the ecological systems that provide human health. The right was acknowledged by the United Nations Human Rights Council during its 48th session in October 2021 in HRC/RES/48/13 and subsequently by the United Nations General Assembly on July 28, 2022 in A/RES/76/300. The right is often the basis for human rights defense by environmental defenders, such as land defenders, water protectors and indigenous rights activists.
The mandate of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights was established in 1995 by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
Felipe González Morales is a Chilean lawyer and academic, specializing in international human rights law. He was a commissioner of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) between 2008 and 2011, a body he chaired between 2010 and 2011 and where he served as rapporteur on migrants. In 2017, he was appointed as United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, a position he held until 2023.
Chaloka Beyani is a Zambian lawyer and legal scholar, who is an associate professor of international law at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He has worked and published extensively in the fields of international human rights law, international criminal law and international humanitarian law, as well as on issues relating to humanitarian assistance and population displacements, in particular internal displacement. In 2023 Beyani was nominated by Zambia for election to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The Netherlands co-nominated Beyani. Zambia had previously put Beyani forth for the 2017 International Court of Justice judges election, but withdrew his name prior to the candidate selection process. If elected, he would have been the first Zambian judge at the ICJ. After five rounds of voting in the Security Council and one round of voting in the General Assembly, Beyani was not elected.
Astrid Jovanna Puentes Riaño is a Colombian-born Mexican law professor. She has led the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA) to support the people who live in La Oroya, "one of the most polluted places on Earth". In 2024 she became the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human right to a healthy environment.