By Obiabin Onukwugha
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has delivered a landmark judgment which indicted the Swiss government of violating the rights of old women by not taking steps to mitigate climate change.
The ECtHR was set up in 1959, and is based in Strasbourg, France.
The judgment delivered recently, held that the weak climate policies by the Switzerland government violate fundamental human rights of.older people.
In thr matter brought before it by Swiss older women who claimed weak policies put them at greater risk of death from heatwaves, the international court in the judgment described as landmark, held that human rights were being violated by Swiss inaction on climate change.
The KlimaSeniorinnen, a group of 2,400 older Swiss women, told the court that several of their rights were being violated.
They submitted that older women are more likely to die in heatwaves, which have become hotter and more common because of fossil fuels. They further argued that Switzerland should do its share to stop the planet heating by the Paris agreement target of 1.5C (2.7F) above preindustrial levels.
In the landmark decision on one of three major climate cases, the ECHR raised judicial pressure on governments to stop filling the atmosphere with gases that make extreme weather more violent.
It was reported that the court’s top bench ruled that Switzerland had violated the rights of a group of older Swiss women to family life.
It however, threw out a French mayor’s case against France and that of a group of young Portuguese people against 32 European countries.
The Swiss verdict is said to open up all 46 members of the Council of Europe to similar cases in national courts that they are likely to lose, according to analysts.
The court ruled that the Swiss authorities had not acted in time to come up with a good enough strategy to cut emissions. It also found that the applicants had not had appropriate access to justice in Switzerland.
The ECHR however, rejected the cases of four individual applicants who had joined the KlimaSeniorinnen.
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The ECHR also rejected about 90% of all applications it receives as inadmissible but fast-tracked the three climate cases to its top bench because of their urgency. It delayed hearings on six more climate cases to get a result on the rulings on Tuesday.
However, it is said that the rulings will influence three other international courts that are examining the role of government climate policy on human rights.
The facts of the three cases varied widely, but they all hinged on the question of whether government inaction on climate change violated fundamental human rights. Some of the governments argued that the cases should not be admitted, and that climate policy should be the subject of national governments rather than international courts.
There were wide spread celebrations after a member of a panel of 17 judges read out the verdicts.
“It feels like a mixed result because two of the cases were inadmissible but actually it’s a huge success.
“The court, which calls itself “the conscience of Europe”, found that Switzerland had failed to comply with its duties to stop climate change. It also set out a path for organisations to bring further cases on behalf of applicants”, said Corina Heri, a law researcher at the University of Zürich.
Joie Chowdhury, an attorney at the Centre for International Environmental Law campaign group, was quoted of saying that the judgment left no doubt that the climate crisis was a human rights crisis. “We expect this ruling to influence climate action and climate litigation across Europe and far beyond,” she said.
Climate activists were also on ground during the court hearing to call for Justice.
A climate activist, Greta Thunberg joined a gathering outside the court before the hearing to encourage faster action.
Also, Anton Foley, who with Thunberg was representing Aurora, a youth group that filed a climate lawsuit against Sweden, said it was “unjust” that responsibility for stopping the climate crisis fell on young people, and praised the Swiss women for stepping up. “We don’t want to be the hope for the older generation. We want them to do this, because we don’t want to fight this fight.”
Charlotte Blattner, a researcher at the University of Berne who specialises in climate law, said the court had delivered a bold judgment in favour of a viable future. “The nature and gravity of the threat of climate change and the urgency to effectively respond to it, require that governments can and will have to be held accountable for their lack of adequate action,” she said.
The court said that keeping global heating to 1.5C was a key part of protecting human rights, rather than the higher 2C limit that courts had used for rulings on cases in Germany and the Netherlands.
Gerry Liston, a lawyer for the Portuguese children, said the recognition that Switzerland’s policies were not science-based was “by far” the most significant aspect of the ruling. “No European government’s climate policies are aligned with anything near 1.5C, so it will be clear to those working on climate litigation in those countries that there is now a clear basis to bring a case in their national courts.”
