The intrinsic links between human rights and environmental protection in the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Session 2 - Environmental protection and human rights: what alliance(s)?

Chair: Makane Moïse Mbengue, Professor at the University of Geneva and Affiliate Professor at Sciences Po Paris.

Abstract

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has repeatedly had to rule on environmental law, without it being clear whether it had jurisdiction to do so. In its first decisions, it demonstrated the closelink between the rights of indigenous communities and their territory, and how the violation of environmental standards had a direct impact on their human rights. It was for this reason that Colombia's request for an advisory opinion sought to establish the link between international environmental law - international environmental law - and human rights.
It was the Advisory Opinion that shed light on the obligations of States to protect the environment in the light of the international law that has developed from Helsinki and Rio to the present day, and which guarantees, in the most recent case law, the right to a healthy environment in 2020 in the case of the indigenous community members of the association Lhaka Honhat (Our Land) v. Argentina. This decision sets a clear precedent for resolution A/76/L75, in which, in 2021, the UN General Assembly determined the existence of a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human or human right.

Ricardo Abello-Galvis

Professor of international law at the University of Rosario, director of post-graduate courses in international human rights law, international humanitarian law and the law of the sea, director/editor of the Colombian Yearbook of International Law - ACDI, member of the Colombian National Group at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague (2014 - 2025), Colombian Agent at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the request for an advisory opinion (OC No.23/17) on the environment and human rights. Corresponding member of the Colombian Academy of Jurisprudence, the Colombian Academy of International Law and IHLADI.