The UN ruling creates a “pathway” to allow climate victims to compel national governments to address their plight.
A UN panel has concluded that Australia has violated the human rights of a group of islanders off its northern coast by failing to adequately protect them from the effects of climate change.
The complaint, filed by eight Torres Strait Islanders and their children over three years ago, is one of a growing group of climate issues being brought around the world on human rights grounds, and the ruling is expected to encourage others.
Islanders said sea-level rise has already damaged food sources and ancestral burial sites, scattering human remains, saying their homes are at risk of submerging.
The panel said Australia had violated two of the three human rights enshrined in a United Nations treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), relating to culture and family life, but not Article 6 on the right to life, according to media reports about Friday revealed.
Australia has called for effective treatment for the islanders.
“This decision represents an important development as the Commission has established a pathway for individuals to assert claims as national systems have failed to take appropriate measures to protect those most vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change on their enjoyment of their human rights,” said commission member Helen Tigroge.
A spokesperson for Australia’s Department of Energy and Climate Change did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There is no enforcement mechanism
The Torres Strait Islander people are part of the indigenous people of Australia, along with the aborigines, who live in small groups of low-lying islands scattered between Australia and Papua New Guinea.
The case was brought when the previous conservative government – seen as lagging in the fight against climate change – was in power. Parliament has since passed legislation to cut emissions and Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has visited the islands this year.
Some 173 of the 193 UN member states have ratified the covenant, including Australia. There is no implementation mechanism but there are follow-up steps and countries generally adhere to the commission’s findings.
More than a billion people will live in coastal areas at risk of sea-level rise by 2050, according to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
It added that global sea levels could rise by as much as 60 centimeters (24 inches) by the end of the century even if greenhouse gas emissions were not drastically reduced.
from San Jose News Bulletin https://sjnewsbulletin.com/un-australias-inaction-on-climate-change-violated-islanders-rights-climate-crisis-news/
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