Last November, the annual Forum of the UN Human Rights Council was held in Geneva with an Iranian president at its head. Let’s imagine that this meeting took place a few months later, for example on April 10, 2024. Let’s imagine the response of the Iranian presidency to the human rights defenders who insult it: “We are violating human rights? international body has condemned us? If you want to attack a country implicated on this issue, attack the host country of the conference, Switzerland, condemned yesterday by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR ) for violation of the eponymous convention!”
This scene did not take place, but it is possible in a world where Iran, which massacres women, young girls and anyone who questions the mullahs’ regime, can chair a human rights forum and where Switzerland is condemned for violating these same rights. The reason ? The complaint from an association of elderly Swiss women, arguing that their country has not taken sufficient action to protect them from the consequences of climate change. One of the applicants, writes the Court in its judgment, believes that “the heat waves deprive her of all energy. She explains that in summer she does not have the courage to leave the house to go swimming”.
“The law is never innocent of the society that gives birth to it,” said former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Reading the 288 pages of the judgment of April 9, 2024 of the Court of Strasbourg is the perfect illustration of this. A society where a State is condemned for the inadequacy of its climate action on the basis of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights – “everyone has the right to respect for their private and family life, of his home and his correspondence” – certainly has a strange conception of law. “Plasticine” law: this is what the Court’s reasoning in this case evokes. Not to mention the interest in taking action recognized by this association, sparked by Greenpeace.
In the report of the association’s founding meeting in 2016, we read that it was Greenpeace, alongside a law firm, which launched the project, Greenpeace which the association’s statutes include as a major financier. Significant resources are indeed required to carry out eight years of proceedings. Everyone is within their rights, but why this indirect action by the NGO? For a legal reason: the ECHR refusing theaction popularis, only associations directly affected by the measure in question can qualify as victims. Older women: what could be better to meet these criteria? That Greenpeace also promotes visceral anti-nuclearism, even though it is an energy solution that makes Switzerland one of the countries whose electricity production is one of the least carbon-intensive in the world, has obviously not posed a problem for the Court, which even accepted, among others, the observations of Greenpeace to form its decision.
And the climate cause in all this? The judgment is binding: the Swiss State must execute it, knowing that the Court leaves it complete freedom as to the measures to be taken. Incidentally, let us recall that, in the past, it was the Swiss voters themselves who, through a vote, rejected one of the local climate laws. Would the Swiss state have the courage to prefer respect for democracy over the climate? Whatever happens, what Switzerland does will obviously not change anything about the climate.
The fact remains that beyond this single country, all the signatory states of the ECHR are concerned, i.e. the 46 states of the European continent, Turkey and Russia included. Globally, 68.2% of CO2 emissions take place in ten countries, but among them, only one, Germany, is a signatory to the convention. Even if the Court condemned all its members, the climate would be little affected. Result of the races? Activism: 1, human rights: 0, climate: 0.1. Much ado about nothing, then, unless noise is your reason for being. Activism has a bright future ahead of it.
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