6 March 2015: The UN Human Rights Council held a full-day panel discussion on the potentially devastating impacts of climate change on human rights, exploring challenges and ways forward towards the realization of human rights for all, with panelists including President of Kiribati Anote Tong and Prime Minister of Tuvalu Enele Sopoaga.

Deputy UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Flavia Pansieri underscored that human-induced climate change undercuts the rights to health, food, water and sanitation, and adequate housing, as well as the right to self-determination for the people of small island States and coastal communities.

Dan Bondi Ogolla, Coordinator and Principal Legal Adviser, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), stated that the interface between human rights and climate change exists on several levels and that substantive obligations of UNFCCC States parties minimize the impact of response measures on human rights.

Briefing the press, Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), noted that, at its current rate, continued sea level rise could result in low-lying Pacific Island States, including Kiribati and Tuvalu, being submerged within decades. He pointed out that, as the two Governments struggle to supply people with adequate food and clean drinking water, some of their citizens have already been forced away from their homes. Colville said the Government of Kiribati has been buying land “offshore,” providing people with the skills to “migrate with dignity” at a time when climate change refugees might become a reality. Warning that climate change refugees might become stateless, he further noted that if the islands of Kiribati and Tuvalu disappear, all the “trappings of a modern State” will be gone with them, including Government buildings, courts, hospitals and schools, which will undermine those States’ peoples’ right to self-determination. Colville emphasized that these issues need to be taken into account in the new global agreement to be adopted at the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties in Paris.

The panel discussion was held on 6 March 2015, in Geneva, Switzerland. [UN Press Release] [OHCHR Press Briefing] [Human Right Council Discussions]