Source: The New Times (Kigali)

24 September 2008 - On September 9 this year, Oxfam International, an international agency fighting poverty submitted a report to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which is now reviewing the relationship between international human rights and climate change. The report titled, "Climate Wrongs and Human Rights," concludes that rich countries, excessive carbon emissions are in violation of the rights of millions of the world's poorest people to life, security, food, health and shelter.

"Climate change was first seen as a scientific problem, then an economic one. Now it is becoming a matter of international justice," said report author Kate Raworth a senior researcher at Oxfam.

Oxfam says that the current trade-off being made between the economic and human costs of tackling the problem is deeply unethical and risks the world failing to cut emissions to stay below the 2°C warming threshold.

"When vulnerable communities have tried to use human rights law for climate justice, it has thrown up major weaknesses," Raworth said. "It is extremely difficult for people in poor countries to identify who to sue, how to prove the injury done, or even where to bring their case."

The Oxfam report says that while lawyers should push to have international courts recognize future injury and joint liability for climate-change damage, existing human rights principles are clearly sufficient to guide rich countries' policies to cut their emissions and finance adaptation.

One undisputable fact is that as climate change happens, industrialized countries are responsible for the bulk of carbon-dioxide emissions in the past and presently.
Since 1800's, approximately 80 per cent of the rise in cumulative emissions is attributable to the industrialized countries; at present they are responsible for nearly 50 per cent of global carbon-dioxide emissions, yet the industrialized countries represent only 25 per cent of the world population.

As a consequence, climate change impacts aggravate the living conditions of people up to a point where their basic rights are in jeopardy. It is for this reason that climate change has now turned into a matter of human rights.
For instance Oxfam International projects that future climate change is expected to put close to 50 million more people at risk of hunger by 2020, and an additional 132 million people by 2050.

In Africa, shrinking arable land, shorter growing seasons, and lower crop yields will exacerbate malnutrition. In some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could fall by 50 per cent by 2020.
This violates the right to food, article 11 of the International Climate change poses significant risks to the right to health (violating article 25 of the UDHR which states that 'everyone has the right to a standard adequate for the health and well being of himself and his family').
According to a 2003 joint study by the World Health Organization and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, global warming may already be responsible for more than 160,000 deaths a year from malaria and malnutrition; a number that could double by 2020.
Climate change will have many impacts on human health. It will affect the intensity of a wide range of diseases - vector-borne, water-borne and respiratory.

At a conference on climate change and migration, United Nations, officials said rising sea levels and intense storms, droughts and floods could force scores of people from their homes and off their lands -- some permanently.
"Global warming and extreme weather conditions may have calamitous consequences for the human rights of millions of people," said Kyung-Kang, the U.N. deputy high commissioner for human rights.

"Ultimately climate change may affect the very right to life of various individuals," she said, pointing to threats of hunger, malnutrition, exposure to disease and lost livelihoods, particularly in poor rural areas dependent on fertile soil.
Finally, human rights considerations also call for vigorous measures to facilitate adaptation to unavoidable climate change [full article]

By: Berna Namata