12 November 2025
One Step Back and Two Steps Forward
In May, after years of litigation, the Higher Regional Court of Hamm rendered its final decision in Lliuya v. RWE AG – a landmark case in which a Peruvian farmer sought to hold the German energy giant RWE financially responsible for measures protecting his property from a potential glacier flood. Although the Court rejected the claim in the end, the judgment has been celebrated as a “success without victory” due to the potential precedent effect in terms of corporate liability. The true significance of the Lliuya v. RWE decision lies not in its dismissal of the plaintiff’s claim, but in the court’s reasoning on extraterritoriality, causality, and preventive protection. Continue reading >>
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16 September 2025
A Right to Defend the Environment
In a remarkable yet underexplored section, the IACtHR establishes a right to defend the environment, along with corresponding duties of States to protect environmental defenders. By recognizing environmental defenders as essential actors in democratic climate governance, the IACtHR’s advisory opinion advances a bold vision of environmental democracy that positions civic engagement as a vital precondition for legitimate and effective climate action. Continue reading >>
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25 July 2025
Enhanced Due Diligence
The IACtHR establishes that States have a series of obligations to ensure a healthy environment and climate, and prevent violations of human rights. To this end, the IACtHR develops the standard of enhanced due diligence as a binding framework for State action. This standard includes elements aimed at ensuring that the response to climate change is effective, fair, transparent, and evidence-based (para. 224). This blog post discusses the heightened due diligence standard, as clarified by the IACtHR, and outlines nine key elements of this standard. Continue reading >>
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22 July 2025
Protecting Rights in the Anthropocene
On July 3, 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) issued its long-awaited Advisory Opinion No. 32 (AO-32/25) on the “Climate Emergency and Human Rights”. With its opinion, the IACtHR became the first human rights monitoring body to recognize that a healthy climate is an autonomous and justiciable human right. This blog post traces the emergence of this new right within the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS) and highlights its most transformative elements for theory and practice. Continue reading >>
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21 July 2025
Addressing Accountability in the IACtHR’s Advisory Opinion
With AO-32/25, the IACtHR has delivered a historic and bold affirmation that climate change is not only an environmental emergency but also a profound human rights crisis, one that requires both prevention and reparation. By articulating States’ duties to provide remedies, the IACtHR has moved the conversation to one of legal accountability and remediation. Continue reading >>
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19 July 2025
Reproductive Rights and the Climate Crisis
On July 3, 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) published its long-awaited Advisory Opinion 32/25 (AO-32/25). The Opinion responds to a 2023 request from Colombia and Chile, asking the IACtHR to clarify the scope of States’ obligations to address the climate emergency under international human rights law. While the decision marks a significant step toward recognizing the climate crisis as a human rights issue, this blog post aims to shed light on a critical omission in the IACtHR’s reasoning: the impact of environmental degradation and the climate emergency on sexual and reproductive health and rights. Continue reading >>
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18 July 2025
The Bloom of Nature’s Rights
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ (IACtHR) advisory opinion on human rights and the climate emergency (AO-32/25) addresses numerous dimensions of the climate crisis, setting an important precedent for the protection of our planet. This post focuses on one particularly significant development: the IACtHR’s recognition of Nature as a subject of rights. We argue that the IACtHR’s pronouncements on this subject mark the advent of an ecocentric paradigm whose implications are likely to be far-reaching and transformative. Continue reading >>
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17 July 2025
A Nod, Not a Leap
This post focuses on one notable aspect of AO-32/25 that has not received attention in other commentary–the IACtHR’s engagement with gender issues. We find that the IACtHR has taken an important step forward, both in recognizing gender as a key determinant of climate vulnerability and in identifying gender-responsive obligations on States. However, the IACtHR’s comments in this regard remain general and often gestural. The obligations identified are limited, narrow, and many relate to data gathering rather than substantial action. Continue reading >>
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16 July 2025
Jus Cogens and the Climate Crisis
While there are many aspects of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR)’s Advisory Opinion 32/25 (AO-32/25) that are new and groundbreaking, the inclusion of a reflection on jus cogens might have surprised some observers. The legal consequences of the recognition as jus cogens of the obligation not to create irreversible damage to the climate and the global environment are profound. Treaties violating the norm are void, customary international law rules cannot exist, nor does the persistent objector rule apply. Continue reading >>15 July 2025
The Right to a Healthy Environment as a Catalyst for Urgent and Ambitious Climate Action at the IACtHR
The right to a healthy environment is at the heart of the landmark Advisory Opinion 32/25 (AO-32/25) on the climate emergency from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). AO-32/25 marks the clearest ruling to date from an international court on the urgency of transformative changes to address the existential threat of the planetary environmental emergency caused by human activities. Continue reading >>
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