By Richmund Sta. Lucia The world is currently looking with great interest at how the groundbreaking case known as the “Carbon Majors” petition will unfold. On September 22, 2015, Greenpeace Southeast Asia, Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement, and numerous other interest groups filed a petition with the Philippine Commission on Human […]
Human Rights
By Jose Felix Pinto-Bazurco* Since its founding in 1979, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (the Court) has issued 24 advisory opinions. Although it has previously recognized the existence of a relationship between environmental protection and the enjoyment of other human rights, it has done so only in relation to […]
By Romany Webb The 23rd Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is set to begin next Monday, November 6, in the city of Bonn in western Germany. The COP will bring together representatives of 194 countries for two weeks of talks […]
By Jessica Wentz On June 23 the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights issued a statement recognizing that the failure to take adequate action on climate change may rise to a violation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The Committee, a body […]
Forced Migration After Paris COP21: Evaluating the “Climate Change Displacement Coordination Facility” By Phillip Dane Warren, Columbia Law Student and Former Sabin Center Intern Climate change represents, perhaps, the greatest challenge of the twenty-first century. As temperatures and sea levels rise, governments around the world will face massive and unprecedented […]
Today, the Sabin Center made a submission to the Philippines Commission on Human Rights in support of a petition requesting an investigation into the responsibility of the investor-owned “Carbon Majors” for human rights violations resulting from the impacts of climate change. The Commission has already launched the investigation, and is […]
Jessica Wentz, Staff Attorney and Associate Research Scholar Last week, I attended the Advisory Committee Workshop of the Platform on Disaster Displacement in Geneva. The Platform is the successor to the Nansen Initiative – a state-led global consultative process aimed at identifying effective practices and building consensus on normative standards […]
by Michael Gerrard Faculty Director In January my Columbia colleague Jeffrey Sachs told me that the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (with which he had worked for several years) was organizing a conference at the Vatican of judges, prosecutors and legal scholars from around the world to discuss how the […]