See also
| HRC/RES/48/13 | |
|---|---|
| UN Human Rights Council | |
| |
| Citation | A/HRC/RES/48/13 |
| Enacted by | UN Human Rights Council |
| Enacted | 8 October 2021 |
The human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a resolution by the United Nations General Assembly and before that the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC, as HRC/RES/48/13), that recognizes a healthy environment as a human right. [1] [2] It was adopted at the 48th session of the HRC, marking the first time that the HRC recognized a human right in a resolution. [3] [4] The draft resolution was put forward by the core group comprising Costa Rica (Penholder), Morocco, Slovenia, Switzerland and the Maldives. [5] The vote passed with 43 votes in favor, 0 votes against, and 4 abstentions (China, India, Japan and the Russian Federation). [1]
The resolution in itself is not legally binding, but it "invites the United Nations General Assembly to consider the matter" (i.e. the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment). [1]
In 2022 during its 76th session, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution recognizing the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. [6] Although General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, this resolution was welcomed by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, [7] multiple special rapporteurs [8] and members of some civil society organizations. [9] [10]
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, commonly known as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) or the United Nations Human Rights Office, is a department of the Secretariat of the United Nations 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.
A United Nations General Assembly resolution is a decision or declaration voted on by all member states of the United Nations in the General Assembly.
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is a United Nations body whose mission is to promote and protect human rights around the world. The Council has 47 members elected for staggered three-year terms on a regional group basis. The headquarters of the Council are at the United Nations Office at Geneva in Switzerland.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) is a multilateral treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (GA) on 16 December 1966 through GA. Resolution 2200A (XXI), and came into force on 3 January 1976. It commits its parties to work toward the granting of economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR) to all individuals including those living in Non-Self-Governing and Trust Territories. The rights include labour rights, the right to health, the right to education, and the right to an adequate standard of living. As of July 2020, the Covenant has 171 parties. A further four countries, including the United States, have signed but not ratified the Covenant.
The human right to water and sanitation (HRWS) is a principle stating that clean drinking water and sanitation are a universal human right because of their high importance in sustaining every person's life. It was recognized as a human right by the United Nations General Assembly on 28 July 2010. The HRWS has been recognized in international law through human rights treaties, declarations and other standards. Some commentators have based an argument for the existence of a universal human right to water on grounds independent of the 2010 General Assembly resolution, such as Article 11.1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR); among those commentators, those who accept the existence of international ius cogens and consider it to include the Covenant's provisions hold that such a right is a universally binding principle of international law. Other treaties that explicitly recognize the HRWS include the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
David Richard Boyd is a Canadian environmental lawyer, activist, and diplomat. He is United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment.
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an international human rights treaty of the United Nations intended to protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities. Parties to the convention are required to promote, protect, and ensure the full enjoyment of human rights by persons with disabilities and ensure that persons with disabilities enjoy full equality under the law. The Convention serves as a major catalyst in the global disability rights movement enabling a shift from viewing persons with disabilities as objects of charity, medical treatment and social protection towards viewing them as full and equal members of society, with human rights. The convention was the first U.N. human rights treaty of the twenty-first century.
Discussions of LGBT rights at the United Nations have included resolutions and joint statements in the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), attention to the expert-led human rights mechanisms, as well as by the UN Agencies.
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a mechanism of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC) that emerged from the 2005 UN reform process. Commonly referred to as the UPR, it was established by General Assembly resolution 60/251 of 3 April 2006, the UPR periodically examines the human rights performance of all 193 UN Member States. It is intended to complement, not duplicate, the work of other human rights mechanisms, including the UN human rights treaty bodies. This is the first international human rights mechanism to address all countries and all human rights. The Working Group on the UPR, which is composed of the HRC's 47 Member States and chaired by the HRC President, conducts country reviews.
The Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development, also known as the Dublin Principles, was a meeting of experts on water related problems that took place on 31 January 1992 at the International Conference on Water and the Environment (ICWE), Dublin, Ireland, organised on 26–31 January 1992.
Water resource policy, sometimes called water resource management or water management, encompasses the policy-making processes and legislation that affect the collection, preparation, use, disposal, and protection of water resources. Water is a necessity for all forms of life as well as industries on which humans are reliant, like technology development and agriculture. This global need for clean water access necessitates water resource policy to determine the means of supplying and protecting water resources. Water resource policy varies by region and is dependent on water availability or scarcity, the condition of aquatic systems, and regional needs for water. Since water basins do not align with national borders, water resource policy is also determined by international agreements, also known as hydropolitics. Water quality protection also falls under the umbrella of water resource policy; laws protecting the chemistry, biology, and ecology of aquatic systems by reducing and eliminating pollution, regulating its usage, and improving the quality are considered water resource policy. When developing water resource policies, many different stakeholders, environmental variables, and considerations have to be taken to ensure the health of people and ecosystems are maintained or improved. Finally, ocean zoning, coastal, and environmental resource management are also encompassed by water resource management, like in the instance of offshore wind land leasing.
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".
The United Nations special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association works independently to inform and advise the United Nations Human Rights Council. The special rapporteur examines, monitors, advises and publicly reports on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association worldwide.
Development is a human right that belongs to everyone, individually and collectively. Everyone is “entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized,” states the groundbreaking UN Declaration on the Right to Development, proclaimed in 1986.
The proposed Convention on the Rights of Older Persons (UNCROP) is likely to be the next major human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations. The proposed treaty will seek to remedy the fragmented human rights structure for Older Persons, and will focus on reaffirming critical human rights which are of concern to older persons. The focus of the treaty will be persons over 60 years of age, which is a growing demographic worldwide due to increased population ageing. The treaty follows from the success of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which has seen near universal acceptance since 1989. Where the UNCRC focuses on the rights of younger persons, the UNCROP will address those who form the older portion of society, who according to United Nations reports, are becoming increasingly vulnerable as a group without applicable normative standards of human rights law. Support for a Convention is becoming increasingly popular, as human rights groups including the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), HelpAge International, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the International Labour Organization, and many other NGOs and states have expressed support for a universal instrument. A raising number of NGOs from across the world have joined forces in advocating for a Convention in the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older Persons (GAROP) which has been set up out of the need to strengthen the rights of older persons worldwide. With population ageing, the human rights of the growing number of older persons have become an increasingly important issue. Among the human rights issues faced by older persons are ageist attitudes leading to discrimination, exclusion and constraints on the legal capacity, autonomy and independent living of older people. Existing human rights violations have been further exacerbated and put on the spotlight by the COVID-19 pandemic. Older people have been denied access to health services and became prone to physical and social isolation. The stigmatisation of older people and ageist images of older persons have also become more evident. The debate surrounding the convention focuses on the implementation and safeguarding of older persons’ human rights aiming to set normative standards of human rights for older persons in an international legally binding instrument. An underlying common factor and root cause of many of human rights violations experienced by older persons, along with its ubiquitous, prevalent, and surreptitious nature, is ageism. Ageism, as defined by the World Health Organization, refers to the stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination towards others or oneself based on age. A UNCROP would go a long way to tackle ageism. Individual relationships generally fall outside of current human rights law, which seeks to present standards of relations between states and individuals. Therefore, it has been suggested that the proposed human rights convention for older persons ought to be drafted as an anti-discrimination convention. However, this would not be consistent with other multilateral human rights conventions such as the ICCPR and ICESCR which set normative standards.
The following lists events that happened with or in collaboration with the United Nations and its agencies in the year 2020.
The Declaration on the Rights of Peasants is an UNGA resolution on human rights with "universal understanding", adopted by the United Nations in 2018. The resolution was passed by a vote of 121-8, with 54 members abstaining.
Mihir Kanade is an author and professor of international law, human rights and development at the University for Peace (UPEACE), an international treaty-based organization and institution of higher education established in pursuance of Resolution 35/55 adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1980. He holds the concurrent positions of the Academic Coordinator of UPEACE since 2016, the Head of its Department of International Law since 2014, and the Director of the UPEACE Human Rights Centre since 2009. Kanade is best known for his contribution to the promotion of the human right to development. He chairs the drafting group appointed by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Chair-Rapporteur of the Intergovernmental Working Group on the Right to Development, for preparing the “zero draft” of a legally binding instrument on the right to development. On 13 March 2020, Kanade was elected by the United Nations Human Rights Council as a member of the Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development in representation of the Asia-Pacific region. The Human Rights Council renewed his mandate for another three years on 4 April 2023.
The Global Pact for the Environment project was launched in 2017 by a network of experts known as the "International Group of Experts for the Pact" (IGEP). The group is made up of more than a hundred legal experts in environmental law and is chaired by former COP21 President Laurent Fabius.
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.
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