ICC to launch human rights petition on global warming

The Inuit Circumpolar Conference has decided to launch a legal action on global warming that, if successful, could break new ground in international law.

After meeting in Nome, Alaska, late last month, ICC’s executive council authorized the development of a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The petition will ask the commission to declare that “human-induced climate change infringes upon the environmental, subsistence, and other human rights of Inuit.”

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, ICC’s chair, said her organization’s executive council is doing this to draw attention to man-made global warming, and the threat that it poses to the Inuit homeland and the Inuit way of life.

“What other recourse do we have, the Inuit of the world, if our governments are not going to act as urgently as we want them to? A tangible example here is that the U.S. is not signing on to the Kyoto Accord, and Russia either. So what other recourse do Inuit have? As elected people we really have to be looking for ways that we can propel our issues forward and raise awareness of what’s happening in the Arctic,” Watt-Cloutier said.

Computer models generated by climate change experts have predicted that most of the permanent ice in the Arctic Ocean will disappear between 2050 and 2070, and that most of the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer.

The ICC believes this will prevent Inuit from exercising their harvesting rights, and will open up the Northwest Passage to commercial ships carrying cargo, minerals, and oil and gas, creating new environmental threats to American, Canadian and Greenlandic offshore areas.

But Watt-Cloutier says Inuit are getting increasingly frustrated in their efforts to get this message across to decision-makers in the world’s capitals.

“When you’re only 150,000 Inuit, it’s not an easy task when you’re up against millions who want to keep the status quo,” Watt-Cloutier said.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, or IACHR, is an arms-length body that operates under the Organization of American States.

Since 1965, the commission has processed about 12,000 human rights cases, many of them involving allegations of mass murder, torture and arbitrary imprisonment made by victims of state terror in countries like Argentina, El Salvador and Guatemala. The body has also dealt with land rights cases brought forward by indigenous peoples throughout the Americas.

The commission may also refer cases to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, a sister organization based in San José, Costa Rica.

Watt-Cloutier said that while in Washington, D.C., earlier this year, she discussed the idea of a human rights-based petition with lawyers at the Centre for International Environmental Law.

“They were very open about this, and they said these issues merit bringing a petition to the Inter-American Commission to claim that kind of a connection to human rights, and that the connections are very strong there.”

She said the ICC approached the issue with caution at first, because relations between Inuit and environmental groups have not always been friendly.

“Our board has always been cautious about who we deal with on these issues,” Watt-Cloutier said. “We’re cautious when lawyers say they’re looking for a client, because we don’t want to be used without agreeing to be used, per se, where there is mutual use of each other’s agendas.”

They’re also getting support from Lloyd Axworthy, a former foreign affairs minister in Jean Chrétien’s government who was a strong backer of the eight-nation Arctic Council. Axworthy has told ICC that he will provide political and fundraising support to help them with the petition.

“He was keen on helping us in this area,” Watt-Cloutier said.

Another ally is James Anaya, an aboriginal lawyer who works at the University of Arizona’s college of law.

“He [Anaya] feels that it would really be breaking new ground, he really felt that, and that it warrants moving ahead,” she said.

Watt-Cloutier said the initiative could change as ICC moves ahead with it. “It could be that this will shift. You know, it’s not in cement. But the whole process of this human rights petition is to be able to put us on the political map.”