President of Liberal International Dr. Hakima el Haité joined the meeting of the ALDE Group of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to present LI’s upcoming project funded by FNF Brussels on finding the missing link between human rights and the environment. LI look forward to working closely together in bringing climate justice to the whole world.
From LI’s perspective, the climate agenda is a development agenda/even more the climate agenda is a peace agenda. Climate change is impacting, on a daily basis, vulnerable countries with its consequences on rain distribution, heatwaves, desertification, soil degradation, the increasing frequency of natural disasters, rising sea levels etc. All these factors are depriving millions of people of their rights to water, food security, health and appropriate, safe housing and safe living conditions.
Those are sustainable development issues, but …in dealing with sustainable development issues, unless you deal with the issues of climate change, life, particularly of the most vulnerable, will continue to be threatened and compromised, and life is already compromised and threatened on most island countries and in Africa.
Now that ‘urgency’ is the keyword: there are only 9 years left for humanity to curve the CO2 emissions to avoid the irreversible damage on our planet.
How can we assure that nations navigate the way of wisdom and implement concrete actions to tackle climate change, and stop its consequences on human rights and achieve climate justice?
The notion of climate justice is established in the fulfilment of human rights in the face of climate change. Climate justice as a concept that strives to establish this missing link between the environment and human rights, as an attempt to solve injustices following the legal pathway provided for by human rights – the process which aims to position climate change as a human rights crisis first and foremost, through the right for a clean environment.
The objective of this work is to observe climate change from the prism of human rights. We need to separate rights holders from duty bearers, putting legal pressure and responsibility on polluters to change, on countries to increase their ambitions and to respect their commitments, to allow us to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 and to stop climate injustice.
Right now, the only accord dealing with climate change and its consequences is the Paris Agreement and it’s not legally binding. We need to take actions for human rights putting climate change at the centre and build policies, national and international laws to protect human rights from climate injustices.
Very simply we need to establish a link between the human rights convention and the Paris Agreement to path the way towards a climate justice international law and a dedicated international body within the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC).
We were inspired by the excellent work already done on this theme, including the great effort put by our colleague and PACE President Rik Daems, in utilising the European Court for Human Rights to explore and strengthen this missing link. Following our meeting earlier this year, we felt it would be beneficial if we united forces on this front and develop a coordinated global effort into mainstreaming the approach of climate justice.
So it’s my pleasure to present our upcoming project today with you, funded by FNF Brussels, that will aim to develop a study exploring all the above mentioned. We hope that it will enrich your own effort, and that we can build synergies in advocating for the inclusion of parliamentarians in spaces such as the UNHCR and the EU, where we can advocate jointly for the development of policies that will reflect this intention. This approach will allow Liberal International to further promote and outsource this model to the rest of the world as well.
So it’s my utmost pleasure to invite ALDE members of the PACE to join our working group and continue developing this important piece of work side by side, uniting our efforts and leverage, as time is not on our side. There was never a better occasion to build bridges that will help us save humanity from a destructive path.
I want to invite you to reflect on this project with me today, offer further guidance as to the focus of the study, as well as our advocacy efforts following afterwards. I believe that together we can accomplish much more in bringing the human rights and climate change agenda closer to each other.
Thank you very much and I look forward to your inputs.
