CISDL Human Rights Programme
Responds to SDG 1 No Poverty, SDG 5 Gender Equality, SDG 10 Reduced Inequalities
Prof. Sumudu Atapattu, Lead Counsel
Adv. Bill Shipley, Programme Manager
Globally, abject poverty and human rights abuses continue to present serious challenges to humanity: it would be impossible to achieve sustainable development without equity and inclusion. Over 1 billion people worldwide continue to live on less than one dollar a day and over double that number lack access to safe drinking water and sanitation. Many groups, particularly, indigenous groups and women, are excluded from most legal decision-making processes. In international law, many questions remain, including how the principles of international environmental law, and international human rights law, can lead to sustainable development.
In international human rights instruments such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and their optional protocols, also the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change which recognizes the special needs of least developed states and states that are particularly vulnerable to consequences of climate change, are increasingly relevant to sustainable development. Moreover, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change which received overwhelming support of the international community recognized the need to protect human rights when taking action on climate change, the first global environmental treaty to explicitly do so.
With the adoption of Sustainable Development Goals and their emphasis on equity and poverty eradication, there is a pressing need for robust and original international legal research and education, building international legal expertise, capacity, and advice in developing countries.
In contribution to global efforts, through our Human Rights Programme in 2022-2027, CISDL aims to:
- Advance knowledge and understanding of international law on human rights for sustainable development, building global legal research and advisory capacity, facilitating learned dialogue among academics and decision-makers, developing and teaching courses on human rights and the environment, and carrying out training programs on the linkages for various constituencies.
- Lead new legal research to inform the global discourse on interlinkages between human rights and the environment, providing inputs to support the ongoing work of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment.
- Lead new legal research and education on how Sustainable Development Goals, legal empowerment of the poor, and gender justice can be strengthened and implemented and discuss the intersectionality of environmental law, human rights and environmental justice intersect with the social aspects of sustainable development.
- Implement research on climate migration and disappearance of states, climate change and human rights, gender justice, and emerging challenges related to indigenous rights, climate change and biodiversity, as well as on the emerging rights of nature recognized under some constitutions.
Lead Counsel: Dr. Sumudu Atapattu, LL.M., PhD (Cantab), Attorney-at-Law (Sri Lanka)
Programme Manager: Adv. Bill Shipley, BA (Northwestern), B.C.L./LL.B. (McGill) (USA)
Legal Research Fellowship: Prof. Benoit Mayer (France); Adv. Zecharias Fassil (Ethiopia); Dr. Marjan Radjavi, B.A. (McGill), M.A. (Laval), PhD (Cantab), Dawson College (Canada); Prof. Myron Frankman, PhD (Texas), McGill University (Canada); Adv. Emeline Pluchon, LL.M., Int. Energy & Env. Law, LL.M. (France); Adv. Bill Shipley, BA, B.C.L./LL.B. (USA); Dr. Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh B.Sc., B.A., E.MA., LL.M., Ph.D. (Netherlands).
CISDL Legal Specialist Award
CISDL Legal Specialist Award 2022: Prof. Rebecca Bratspies, CUNY School of Law, United States of America
CISDL Legal Specialist Award 2021: Dr. Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands
CISDL Legal Specialist Award 2020: Prof. Dr. David Boyd, University of British Columbia, Canada
CISDL Legal Specialist Award 2019: Adv Amanda Kron, United Nations Human Rights
CISDL Legal Specialist Award 2018: Adv William Shipley
Key Publications
- Cambridge Handbook on Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development by SumuduAtapattu, Carmen Gonzalez and Sara L. Seck (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2021): The work explores the often-neglected social dimension of sustainability and its relationship to human rights and environmental justice by using a variety of legal frameworks and case studies from around the world.
- Human Rights and Environment: Key Issues by SumuduAtapattu and Andrea Schapper (Routledge, 2019): This textbook encourages students to think critically about how many environmental issues lead to a violation of existing rights and, by taking a socio-legal approach, provides a good understanding of both human rights and environmental issues, as well as the limitations of each regime, and will explore the ways in which human rights law and institutions can be used to obtain relief for the victims of environmental degradation or of adverse effects of environmental policies.
- Global South Approaches to International Environmental Law by Sumudu Atapattuin Lavanya Rajamani and Jaqueline Peel (eds.), Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law (Oxford University Press, 2020): This reference work provides a comprehensive discussion of the dynamic and important field of international law concerned with environmental protection and discusses the key principles underpinning international environmental law, its relevant actors and tools, and rules applying in its substantive sub-fields such as climate law, oceans law, wildlife and biodiversity law, and hazardous substances regulation.
- Environmental Justice, Climate Justice and constitutionalism: protecting vulnerable communities by Sumudu Atapattu in Research Handbook on Global Climate Constitutionalism, Jordi Jaria-Manzano AND Susana Borràs (eds.) (Edward Elgar 2019): This Research Handbook provides vital reading for students and scholars of environmental, constitutional and administrative law and policy as well as for climate change practitioners, policy makers and activists will also find its insights highly informative.
- Global Environmental Change and Innovation in International Law by Neil Craik, Cameron S. G. Jefferies, Sara L. Seck and Tim Stephens (Cambridge University Press 2018): This work explores the concept of innovation in normative and institutional responses to international law related to environmental change. Using a range of case studies, the contributions to this collection track innovation – descriptively, normatively, and as a process in and of itself – to explain international environmental law’s functionality in the Anthropocene.
- International Environmental Law and the Global South by Shawkat Alam, Sumudu Atapattu, Carmen G. Gonzalez and Jona Razzaque (Cambridge University Press 2016): This volume examines both the historical origins of the North-South divide in European colonialism as well as its contemporary manifestations in a range of issues including food justice, energy justice, indigenous rights, trade, investment, extractive industries, human rights, land grabs, hazardous waste, and climate change.
- Carmen G. Gonzalez and Sumudu Atapattu, International Environmental Law, Environmental Justice, and the Global South (2017), Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems, Vol. 26, No. 2, 229.
- Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, A human rights approach to energy: Realizing the rights of billions within ecological limits (2021), Volume 31, Issue 1, 16-26.
- Sara L. Seck, Richard Devlin and Siobhan Quigg, Soft law, legal ethics and the corporate lawyer: confronting human rights and sustainability norms (2021), Legal Ethics, 24:1, 1-3.
- Letnar Cernic, Jernej, Moving Towards Protecting Human Rights in Global Business Supply Chains (2018). Boston University International Law Journal, Vol. 35, No. 2, 101-116.