New Book by Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh – ‘State Responsibility, Climate Change and Human Rights under International Law’
About the book
The last decade has witnessed an increasing focus on the relationship between climate change and human rights. Several international human rights bodies have expressed concern about the negative implications of climate change for the enjoyment of human rights, and the Paris Agreement is the first multilateral climate agreement to refer explicitly to states' human rights obligations in connection with climate change. Human rights arguments have also been invoked in an increasing number of climate change-related lawsuits. Yet despite this, there are still significant gaps in our understanding of the role of international human rights law in enhancing accountability for climate change.
A new book by Assistant Professor Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, ‘State Responsibility, Climate Change and Human Rights under International Law’ (Hart Publishing 2019) aims to fill these gaps. It offers a timely and comprehensive analysis of the legal issues related to accountability for the human rights impact of climate change, drawing on the state responsibility regime. This framework allows her to explain when and where state action relating to climate change may amount to a violation of human rights, and evaluate various avenues of legal redress available to victims. The overall analysis offers a perceptive insight into the potential of innovative rights-based climate actions to shape climate and energy policies around the world.
Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University. Her research broadly speaking focuses on the role of law in addressing sustainable development challenges. From 2015 to 2018 she was a (Senior) Lecturer in Environmental Law at the University of the South Pacific School of Law in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Amongst other things, she carried out research into the impact of climate displacement on the enjoyment of human rights. In 2018 she received a NWO Veni-grant for her project Climate Justice through the Courts.