The Cathédrale de Notre Dame de Lausanne. Lausanne is the capital of the Swiss canton Vaud.
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, ruled that Switzerland had violated the human rights of its citizens by not adequately addressing the country’s and world’s climate change crisis that has fueled heat waves and undermined health.
The court found a violation of the rights of the Klimaseniorinnen both on process and on the substance of the case.
The suit was brought by a group of more than 2,000 women, most of them elderly, known as the KlimaSeniorinnenSchweiz.
The KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz is a group that organizes female seniors who demand a judicial review of climate policy.
The landmark ruling marks the first time the court has taken action on climate litigation. Switzerland has no right of appeal and the judgment is legally binding and will also set a precedent for other climate-change related cases.
The court ruled that the Swiss government had violated some of the women’s human rights due to “critical gaps” in its national legislation to reduce planet-heating emissions, as well as a failure to meet past climate targets.
This failure to act amounted to a breach of the women’s rights to effective protection from the “the serious adverse effects of climate change on lives, health, well-being and quality of life,” the court said in a statement.
The 16-to-1 ruling held that the KlimaSeniorinnen were subject to a violation of Article 8 as well as (unanimously) Article 6 – the right to a fair trial in their country.
Established in 1959 and based in Strasbourg, the The European Court of Human Rights, also known as the Strasbourg Court is an international court of the Council of Europe that interprets the European Convention on Human Rights and hears cases that allege that a state has breached one or more of the human rights enumerated in the convention or its optional protocols.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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