THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY AS A HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION: AN ANALYSIS OF RECENT DECISIONS BY THE UN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66104/jkyvdf85Keywords:
Climate emergency; Human Rights; UN Human Rights Committee; Right to life; International State responsibility.Abstract
This article examines the climate emergency from the perspective of International Human Rights Law, analyzing its characterization as a factor of fundamental rights violations, with particular emphasis on recent decisions of the United Nations Human Rights Committee. Climate change, by intensifying extreme events, degrading essential ecosystems, and deepening structural inequalities, directly affects rights such as life, human dignity, health, housing, and the self-determination of peoples, posing unprecedented challenges to State responsibility at the international level. The research adopts a qualitative, legal-dogmatic approach based on the analysis of individual communications, general comments, and international normative instruments, with particular attention to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It is demonstrated that the Committee has advanced an evolutive interpretation of the right to life, recognizing that serious, foreseeable, and preventable climate-related risks may constitute human rights violations, depending on the assessment of relevant legal factors in the specific case. Finally, the article discusses the advances, limits, and challenges of this jurisprudential development, particularly with regard to causality, territoriality, and the effectiveness of decisions in addressing the global climate emergency, as well as examining prospects for strengthening the international protection of human rights in the face of the climate emergency.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Eduarda Victoria da Costa Pereira, Yasmin Carneiro Guimarães da Silva, Adriana Moutinho Magalhães Iannuzzi
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