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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.