SLP 03 (2013)

SUMMMARY

Right to peace Kamila Šrolerová

This paper focuses on the “new human right” – the right to peace. The new drafted Declaration on the Right to Peace prepared on the ground of the Human Rights Council has been analysed in the paper. The author has paid her attention to the particular provisions of the draft and state of play of negotiation regarding the Declaration. Human rights protection in the context of forced environmental migration Karolina Žákovská, MilanLipovský Migration caused by environmental degradation is likely to be one of the most important consequences of global climate change. Estimates vary between 50 and 350 million persons displaced for this reason within the next four decades. Although this phenomenon raises a number of important legal questions, the international law takes it into account only in a fragmentary way. The present article focuses on human rights aspects of forced environmental migration with a particular attention being paid to the special situation of inhabitants of low-lying island States facing the risk of loss of their territory due to the sea level rise. The article starts with a general introduction describing the environmental migration phenomenon and its relation to global climate change. The second part defines appropriate terminology. The main focus is concentrated on characterizing the term “environmental refugee” within the meaning denoted to it especially for the purposes of this article. Alongside with that the article works with other terms used within the sources of public international law, such as environmental migrant, forced / voluntary migrant, disappearing states etc. Relying on the defined scenario of submerged islands once creating the whole territory of an island state, the status of such states´ citizens is evaluated in the third part. Current public international law does not offer necessary status to protect the inhabitants of so called disappearing states and hence needs to be changed. The refugee status is not available. The fourth part analyses the relationship between forced environmental migration and human rights. It shows that a severe environmental degradation caused by impacts of climate change may violate – or impede the full enjoyment of – a number of individual human rights, including the right to life itself, as well as certain fundamental group rights (especially those of indigenous peoples). It further attempts to identify basic obligations of States corresponding to rights of affected populations. Attention is being paid to obligations relating both to prevention of environmental migration (or, in other words, of serious environmental degradation) and to protection of human rights when the latter becomes inevitable.

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