030733 KU More-than-Human Rights and the Environment in International Law (2026W)

International human rights law developed last century following WW2 and flourished with the proliferation of multiple international treaties. None of these treaties, however, protected human rights regarding the environment nor the environment itself. They seemingly overlooked the inherent and dependent relationship between human well-being and ecological systems. Environmental protection was addressed by international environmental law, which developed subsequently on a separate, parallel track to human rights law. As such, the linkage between human rights and the environment remained underdeveloped for decades. This gap was only recently addressed this century via initiatives to conceptualise and protect a right to a clean, safe, and healthy environment at the domestic, regional, and finally international level. Despite developments, the legal nature and contours of such a right are still blurred.

This course examines the evolving relationship between human rights and the environment under international law. Students will explore the legal foundations including treaties and case law of human rights and the environment at the international but also regional levels. Attention is paid here to the African, Inter-American, and European systems of human rights. While focusing on the environment in general, the course also examines climate change in particular, including the most up-to-date case law that assesses human rights standards vis-à-vis the impacts of climate change and state responsibility. As such, this course covers not only the history of human rights’ evolution but also contemporary debates and future directions of that evolution. Specific attention is given here to “more-than-human” perspectives, including extending legal personality and rights to nature, such as rivers and mountains.

Alongside doctrinal analysis, the course engages critically with the assumptions and power structures at the core of international law and that continue to shape it. Drawing on (eco)feminist, Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), and Indigenous perspectives, students will question whose interests are protected, whose voices are marginalised, and how environmental harms are perceived and experienced across different communities and species. This aspect of the course invites students to step out of their own perspective and use their imagination to consider other ways of being. A key element here is to utilise law as a tool of worldmaking and to envision alternative futures than the one presented to us in, for example, the reports of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change. This course is open to students with interests in human rights, international law, and current global environmental challenges. It is also suitable for students who are interested in the theoretical critiques of international law.