CYIL vol. 15 (2024)
PETRA BAUMRUK Ksentini was appointed to study the relationship between human rights and the environment. The appointment was made by the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). 35 The special rapporteur submitted four reports to the Sub-Commission between 1991 and 1994. 36 In her final report, in 1994, she noted that: [t]he International environmental regulations, which emerged from a worldwide movement and a collective realization of the dangers threatening our planet and the future of mankind, where initially sectorial and essentially envisaged within the traditional framework of inter-State relations; they have finally attained a global dimension , which has made possible the shift from environmental law to the right to a healthy and decent environment 37 (emphasis added). Nevertheless, it must be noted that simply because environmental issues have become global in dimension does not imply that this development also led to the recognition of an individual right to a healthy environment. Hence, the report calls for the United Nations to adopt a set of norms consolidating this evolving right to a clean and satisfactory environment. It recommends adopting the Draft Principles on Human Rights and the Environment, written in 1994 by a UN sponsored group of human rights and environment experts. 38 T he Draft Principles include among others: ‘the right to secure, healthy and ecologically sound environment, [and] …the right to freedom from pollution, environmental degradation and activities that adversely affect the environment, threaten life, health, livelihood, well-being or sustainable development within, across or outside national boundaries’. 39 Unfortunately, the UN did not take (nor has it taken) any substantive action on the report or the draft principles. 40 Thus, as Ksentini’s Report on Human Rights and Environment indicates, an international right to a healthy environment was beginning to emerge at the time in international agreements, but no concrete action was taken to legally recognize this right. Moreover, from 2002 until 2008, the UNCHR appointed a Special Rapporteur whose mandate extended to environmental matters, namely the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and thus considering how environmental conditions impact the right to health. 41 This aspect has been, for example, considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) whose constitution proclaims a right to health. 42 The 1946 Constitution of the WH0 43 was the first international instrument to 35 Now called the Sub-Commission on Minorities. ATAPATTU, Sumudu: The Public Health Impact, p. 299. 36 SHELTON, Dinah: Human Rights and the Environment, pp. 168-169. MÜLLEROVÁ, Hana: Aktuální otázky zakotvení lidského práva na životní prostředí v mezinárodním právu. [Current issues of enshrining the human right to the environment in international law] p. 28. 37 Commission on Human Rights. Final Report, 6 July 1994. Available online at: http://www.unhchr.ch/ Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/0/eeab2b6937bccaa18025675c005779c3?Opendocument (accessed 4 December 2022) (Final Report). 38 MÜLLEROVÁ, Hana: Aktuální otázky zakotvení lidského práva na životní prostředí v mezinárodním právu. [Current issues of enshrining the human right to the environment in international law]. pp. 28–29. 39 Draft Principles on Human Rights and the Environment, 1994. Principle 2, in Part I, and Principle 5, in Part II. Available online at: University of Minnesota Human Rights Library http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/ instree/1994-dec.htm (accessed 26 October 2022). 40 ANTON, Donald K. and SHELTON, Dinah L.: op. cit., p. 139. 41 SHELTON, Dinah: Human Rights and the Environment, p. 145. 42 https://www.who.int/about/governance/constitution (accessed 26 October 2022). 43 Adopted by the International Health Conference held in New York, from 19 June to 22 July 1946, signed on
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