Human Rights and Climate Change

On 17th July 2007, H.E. President Gayoom delivered a speech to the Royal Commonwealth Society in London in which he asked the question: "Is there a Right to a Safe Environment?" In the speech, the President noted that despite twenty years of international advocacy on climate change, the problem is worse today than it has ever been. Looking towards the crucial Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia in December 2007, the President therefore suggested supplementing traditional negotiations on climate change with a new approach focused on the linkages between human rights and climate change. This approach would build-on existing international agreements, such as the 1972 Stockholm Convention, which have demonstrated that the quality of the environment has clear implications for the full enjoyment of human rights. Taking this one step further, the President’s proposed new initiative on the "human dimension of global climate change" would address the fact that if environmental degradation impacts on human rights, and if climate change causes environmental degradation, then there must be a relationship between climate change and human rights.

On 20th September 2007, H.E. Abdulla Shahid, Minister of Foreign Affairs, gave a landmark speech to the UN Human Rights Council in which he called on the Council to hold a debate on the link between climate change and the full enjoyment of human rights.

On 13th-14th November 2007, the Maldives hosted a Small Island States Conference on the Human Dimension of Global Climate Change. During the Conference, the world’s Small Island States, which are among the most vulnerable communities on the planet to climate change, discussed the impact of global warming on individual people in their countries and also, for the first time, asked the question: how does climate change affect the human rights of our citizens. The outcome of the Conference was the Male’ Declaration on the Human Dimension of Global Climate Change which for the first time in an international agreement explicitly said that "climate change has clear and immediate implications for the full enjoyment of human rights".

After helping agree a South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Declaration on Climate Change in Delhi, India, which stated that climate change impacts on the right to development; the Maldives was also central to efforts to raise awareness of the Human Dimension of Climate Change during the historic United Nations Climate Change Conference that took place in Bali, Indonesia in December 2007, and which launched the Bali Process of climate change negotiations. During that Conference H.E. President Gayoom delivered a keynote speech in which he urged negotiators to be mindful of the human rights implications of climate change. Also at Bali, Minister Shahid and the United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Kyung-wha Kang, delivered major speeches on human rights and climate change.

Building on the momentum generated by these steps, in March 2008 the Maldives, together with 80 co-sponsors from all regional groups, secured the adoption, by consensus, of United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution 7/23 on "Human Rights and Climate Change" which, for the first time in an official UN resolution, stated explicitly the global warming has implications for the full enjoyment of human rights. The resolution asked the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to prepare a study on these implications ahead of a full Human Rights Council debate on the subject in March 2009.

Ahead of the Human Rights Council debate, and in order to provide useful input into the OHCHR study, the Maldives is organising a year of events and activities designed to develop thinking and understanding surrounding the inter-related and inter-connected issues of climate change, human life, human rights and justice. Events have already been organised in Geneva and New York and more are planned for late 2008 and early 2009. Finally, the Maldives is currently working with the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) to produce a detailed appraisal of the effects of climate change on individual rights and freedoms in the Maldives. This will be published in mid-August 2008.

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