COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Fifty-second session
Item 5 of the provisional agenda

QUESTION OF THE REALIZATION IN ALL COUNTRIES OF THE ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS CONTAINED IN THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND IN THE INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS, AND STUDY OF SPECIAL PROBLEMS WHICH THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES FACE IN THEIR EFFORTS TO ACHIEVE THESE HUMAN RIGHTS



Human rights and the environment


Report of the Secretary-General prepared in accordance with Commission resolution 1995/14


Addendum

(Note: The following is the full text of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund comments, but only an excerpt from this U.N. document)

II. COMMENTS PRESENTED BY NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS

Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund

[Original: English]
[18 December 1995]

1. Ms. Ksentini's final report presents an historic opportunity for the international community to address the human impact of environmental degradation. The Commission on Human Rights, as the principal human rights organ of the United Nations, has a solemn obligation to take advantage of this opportunity.

2. The year and a half since Ms. Ksentini submitted her final report to the Sub-Commission has produced a spate of troubling examples of the close relationship between human rights and the environment. The Nigerian Government's execution of playwright and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Chinese Government's determination to press ahead with the enormously destructive Three Gorges Dam project, the French Government's resumption of nuclear testing in the South Pacific, and the United States based Freeport McMoran, Inc.'s environmentally and socially destructive gold mining operations in Indonesia are emblematic of the widespread connections between human rights and environmental degradation. These and countless other human rights and environmental tragedies confirm the need for the international community and the Commission on Human Rights to take affirmative action to address the issues raised in Ms. Ksentini's final report.

3. International human rights principles guarantee a broad array of civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. Destruction of the environment in many cases infringes those rights. Conversely, human rights abuses in many cases lead to the destruction of the environment. Because of this linkage, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, working with several other non-governmental organizations, in 1989 launched an initiative at the Sub-Commission to gain formal legal recognition of the connections between human rights and the environment.

4. In May 1994, the Legal Defense Fund, in cooperation with the Association mondiale pour l'école instrument de paix and the Société suisse pour la protection de l'environnement, and on behalf of Ms. Ksentini, organized and conducted a meeting of experts on human rights and the environment at the Centre for Human Rights in Geneva. The Geneva group of experts produced the draft declaration of principles on human rights and the environment, the first international instrument comprehensively to address the environmental dimension of recognized human rights. Ms. Ksentini included the draft declaration as an annex to her final report.

5. The draft declaration and the body of Ms. Ksentini's final report illustrate a progression from consideration of a new "right to environment" to recognition of the environmental dimension of established human rights. For example, the right to life includes the right to be free of environmental conditions that endanger life; the right to health includes the right to live and work in an environment that does not pose a threat to human health; the right to housing incorporates the right to housing in environmentally sound conditions; the right to information includes the right to environmental information; freedom of speech and opinion includes the right to hold and express opinions and information regarding the environment; the right to education includes the right to environmental education; the right to participate includes the right to participate in decisions that affect the environment; and the right to effective remedies includes the right to remedies for environmental harm.

6. Environmental human rights also incorporate the right to freedom from discrimination in the protection and enjoyment of all other rights, the rights of future generations and the rights of indigenous peoples. Moreover, the rights imply duties and responsibilities that apply to individuals, groups, States, international organizations and transnational corporations to protect and preserve the environment and to respect and ensure environmental human rights.

7. Ms. Ksentini's final report confirms the importance of and legal basis for environmental human rights and signals the need for the international community to proceed to the next phase on environmental human rights. The next phase involves development of universal standards and establishment of appropriate procedures to facilitate the realization of environmental human rights for all.

8. The lack of a focused procedure for developing, implementing and enforcing environmental human rights impedes their realization. Adoption of Ms. Ksentini's recommendations - to appoint a thematic rapporteur on human rights and the environment at the Commission of Human Rights, and to use the draft declaration of principles on human rights and the environment as the basis for adopting "a set of norms consolidating the right to a satisfactory environment" - should fill the void.

9. A special rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on human rights and the environment would provide a focal point for the study, investigation, examination and resolution of environmental human rights problems and for the further development of universal standards of environmental human rights. No other United Nations organ concerned with the environment is designed or equipped to provide redress for individual victims of environmental evils. United Nations environmental work through the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the International Labour Organization and other agencies has contributed to the emergence of environmental standards, but none of those bodies provides an enforcement mechanism for correction of environment-related human rights abuses.

10. Not every environmental problem implicates human rights, and not everyone that does implicate human rights belongs before the Commission on Human Rights, but the Commission must not shirk its responsibility to deal with situations and issues that are amenable to improvement through a carefully crafted human rights procedure.

11. The draft declaration of principles on human rights and the environment represents a major step towards the formulation and adoption of a General Assembly resolution or other international instrument on human rights and the environment. The Commission on Human Rights has already recognized the draft declaration as a significant standard-setting activity (E/CN.4/1995/81).

12. The Commission should continue developing and strengthening the principles in the draft declaration. Environmental human rights standards should draw from and contribute to developments in domestic and international institutions. The Commission on Human Rights, through a thematic rapporteur on human rights and the environment, should be able to facilitate that process and disseminate and promote the standards that emerge. Environmental human rights should figure prominently in the work of international human rights forums, international environmental forums and in relevant sectors of domestic institutions.

13. The final report of Ms. Ksentini places the international community and the Commission on Human Rights at a crossroads in their treatment of the connections between human rights and the environment. The Legal Defense Fund urges the Commission to take full advantage of this important initiative and guide it along the path to increased environmental and human rights protection. Recognition of environmental human rights is doctrinally sound, morally urgent and profoundly utilitarian, and the Commission on Human Rights has a moral and legal mandate to establish a procedure to promote and protect these rights.