Human Rights and the Climate Crisis

The relationship between international human rights law and the protection of the environment and the climate system is developing at unusual speed. At the global level, the International Court of Justice has articulated States' binding legal obligations in the face of climate change, including under international human rights law, and established the right to a healthy environment. This builds on the Opinion of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and a wealth of jurisprudence in national jurisdictions around the world recognizing the significance of human rights obligations to climate and environmental responsibilities. At the same time in the related field of international criminal law, efforts to create a new international crime of ecocide have gained pace since a diverse panel of international lawyers proposed a definition in summer 2021 to be incorporated as the fifth crime in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. In this three-week course, we will explore these and other recent legal developments, which appear to be accelerating in line with the climate crisis. We will examine the potential and limitations of international human rights law and international criminal law to protect the environment and the climate system, with attention to the interrelationship between human health and well-being and that of the wider ecosystem.