A/HRC/10/61
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19. Equally, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) has clarified
that the right to adequate food requires the adoption of “appropriate economic, environmental
and social policies” and that the right to health extends to its underlying determinants, including
a healthy environment.19
B. Effects on specific rights
20. Whereas global warming will potentially have implications for the full range of human
rights, the following subsections provide examples of rights which seem to relate most directly to
climate change-related impacts identified by IPCC.
1. The right to life
21. The right to life is explicitly protected under the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.20 The Human Rights Committee
has described the right to life as the “supreme right”, “basic to all human rights”, and it is a right
from which no derogation is permitted even in time of public emergency.21 Moreover, the
Committee has clarified that the right to life imposes an obligation on States to take positive
measures for its protection, including taking measures to reduce infant mortality, malnutrition
and epidemics.22 The Convention on the Rights of the Child explicitly links the right to life to the
obligation of States “to ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of
the child”.23 According to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the right to survival and
development must be implemented in a holistic manner, “through the enforcement of all the
other provisions of the Convention, including rights to health, adequate nutrition, social security,
an adequate standard of living, a healthy and safe environment …”.24
19
Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), general comments
No. 12 (1999) on the right to adequate food (art. 11), para. 4, and No. 14 (2000) on the right to
the highest attainable standard of health (art. 12), para. 4.
20
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), art. 6; CRC, art. 6.
21
Human Rights Committee, general comments No. 6 (1982) on art. 6 (Right to life), para. 1,
and No. 14 (1984) on art. 6 (Right to life), para. 1.
22
Human Rights Committee, general comment No. 6, para. 5. Likewise, the Committee
has asked States to provide data on pregnancy and childbirth-related deaths and
gender-disaggregated data on infant mortality rates when reporting on the status of
implementation of the right to life (general comment No. 28 (2000) on art. 3 (The equality of
rights between men and women), para. 10).
23
24
CRC, art. 6, para. 2.
Committee on the Rights of the Child, general comment No. 7 (2006) on implementing rights
in early childhood, para. 10.
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