There still is insufficient appreciation of climate displacement as a contemporary and pressing threat to the lives and livelihoods of people. Coping with climate change critically reviews the link between the human rights system and climate displacement. It examines the imperatives of human rights protection, the role of adopting a human rights-based approach as a coping catalyst, and recent developments in the area of strategic climate change litigation. Drawing on the Peninsula Principles on climate displacement within States, which where elaborated and adopted by a drafting committee of experts and practitioners in 2013, the chapter assesses concrete coping instruments such as planned relocation and National Climate Land Banks.

This book is an updated and lengthened version of the lectures that I gave in the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law in October 2016 as part of the Lauterpacht lecture series, which was founded in 1983 to celebrate the unique contribution to the development of public international law made by Sir Hersch Lauterpacht. In keeping with the lecture series, I sought connections between my work as a feminist international lawyer and that of Sir Hersch Lauterpacht in his long career as an academic and scholar, a barrister and judge at the International Court of Justice and, as recounted by Sir Robert Jennings, a ‘remarkable’ teacher.1 In the simplest, logistic terms, he was a lecturer at the London School of Economics prior to taking up his chair at Cambridge and he also lectured at the University of Michigan,2 both places where I hold academic appointments.

The intensity of climate-related impacts is becoming more evident, and public concern is on the rise all around the globe. The harmful impacts of the environmental crisis could translate into a matter of human survival redefining human mobility patterns. At the same time, the current pandemic is amplifying calls for an alternative future strategy ‘beyond the prism of end-state solutions’.2 Many countries are acutely aware of the potential serious implications of climate-induced migration. The challenges it poses to our legal systems are complex, interrelated, and multidimensional, giving rise to an instability we are not well-equipped to deal with.

I turn now from the brief overview of the substance and institutions of the Women Peace and Security (WPS) agenda to ask what WPS means for international lawyers. The language of the WPS resolutions is not that of international law but primarily that of international relations (‘international peace and security’), good governance (‘participation’, ‘monitoring’, ‘indicators’, ‘reporting’) and development (‘empowerment’, ‘leadership’) with subsets of these disciplines such as conflict, security and peace studies. And, of course, the language of gender permeates the resolutions, albeit largely as a synonym for women and girls. The state-centric emphasis of international law is softened by calls for relevant actions by diverse actors as well as states – international institutions, international personnel, men and boys, civil society. The agenda seeks to shape behaviour, policy and decision-making by all these different actors as well as by states, which raises the question of whether the WPS resolutions create binding obligations under international law, which is the subject of this chapter.

Changes in climate conditions and the increasing number of climate-related disasters are modifying mobility patterns in Brazil. The multi-causality of factors leading to migration hinders not only the identification of such individuals but also the development of solutions. This study aims to analyse to what extent Brazil’s national climate and migration policies are aligned with international recommendations by identifying synergies and other specific provisions associated with human mobility in the context of climate change. It initially focuses on how rising global average temperatures relate to human displacement nationwide.

This chapter explains the basis of the access to justice obligations placed on international organisations (IOs) under international law. One foundational issue is whether or not IOs are capable of being placed under international obligations in general. The answer to this question, as this chapter will show, is most certainly in the affirmative. IOs are international legal persons or ‘subjects’ of international law that possess their own legal personality. This means that international law can bind IOs directly and impose obligations that ought to be implemented by the IO. After showing how international law can directly place IOs under international obligations in general, the focus shifts to whether IOs can be placed under access to justice obligations in particular. The chapter discusses what is meant by access to justice as a value, and how that value has translated into legal rights in the form of the right to a fair trial. The discussion then clarifies how IOs specifically are put under access to justice obligations, including demonstrating the rationale behind doing so. It is argued that IOs are required to provide justice consistently with fair trial guarantees to private persons whenever IO actions adversely impact them.

In Chapter 2, I explored whether the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda creates binding obligations for states and other actors under international law. This chapter and Chapter 4 consider further the concepts enshrined in the Security Council’s resolution 1325 (2000): ‘women and peace and security’. In Chapter 1, I addressed the Security Council’s simplistic understanding of ‘women’. This chapter looks at the Council’s conceptualisation of ‘peace’ and Chapter 4 that of ‘security’, both within the framework of public international law. But this is admittedly an artificial distinction: without security there cannot be peace for any person, regardless of their sex, gender, age or any other categorisation of identity, and without peace there is no security.1 And militarised security especially denies peace and, for many, fosters feelings of insecurity.

This chapter provides a general, comprehensive introduction to the entire book. It includes an overview of the theme of the book and its scope while outlining the main questions and the methodology used. The chapter also introduces the case studies and provides a synopsis of the chapters to follow.