A/HRC/4/28 page 20 deportation of D. to St. Kitts would expose him to a real risk of dying under most distressing circumstances and would thus amount to inhuman treatment”.64 The Court ordered that D. should not be deported.65 80. K.L. v. Peru concerned a 17-year-old Peruvian who was denied a therapeutic abortion.66 When K.L. was 14 weeks pregnant, doctors at a public hospital in Lima diagnosed the foetus with anencephaly, a foetal abnormality that would endanger K.L.’s health if pregnancy continued. Under Peru’s Criminal Code, therapeutic abortion is permissible when necessary to safeguard the life or health of the woman. However, K.L. was denied a therapeutic abortion by the director of the hospital. She was compelled to carry the foetus to term and forced to feed the baby until his inevitable death several days after birth. According to K.L., Peru’s failure to respond to the reluctance of some of the medical community to comply with the legal provision authorizing therapeutic abortion violated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Human Rights Committee held that, by denying the complainant’s request to undergo an abortion in accordance with the Peruvian Criminal Code, the Government was in breach of its obligations under the Covenant.67 The Committee decided, inter alia, that the Government must take steps to prevent the future occurrence of similar violations. The Special Rapporteur adds that one way for the Government to conform to its existing obligations under the Criminal Code is to provide clear, appropriate guidance to health professionals about when a therapeutic abortion is lawful and should be available. 81. In Yanomami v. Brazil, the applicants claimed that the construction of a highway and exploitation of resources on their traditional lands, and the resulting damage to their environment and traditional way of life, violated the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.68 They claimed that the road building displaced them from their ancestral lands and that many of their people died from influenza, tuberculosis, measles, venereal diseases and other epidemics arising from the project. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights established a link between environmental quality and the right to life, and held that the failure of the Government to provide the Yanomami with an alternative site to live in amounted to a violation of their rights to life, liberty and personal security. The Commission recommended that “the Government of Brazil continue to take preventive and curative health measures to protect the lives and health of Indians exposed to infectious or contagious diseases”. 2. Protect 82. The duty to protect requires States to take measures that prevent third parties (e.g. private companies) from interfering with the right to the highest attainable standard of health.69 83. In Ratlam Municipality Council v. Vardi Chand, the Supreme Court of India held that municipalities had a duty to protect the environment in the interests of public health.70 The Court found that “pollutants being discharged by big factories … [are] a challenge to the social justice component of the rule of law”. The Court found that the preservation of public health, premised on the decency and dignity of individuals, was a non-negotiable facet of human rights requiring State action. 84. Another case with an environmental dimension is Social and Economic Rights Action Center and Center for Economic and Social Rights v. Nigeria.71 Members of the Ogoni community in Nigeria alleged that the military Government had violated their rights to health