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Human rights lawyers stand with climate strike students
Australian Lawyers for Human Rights has backed schoolchildren across the country who took the day off last Friday to protest inaction on climate change, saying all children have the right to be heard on matters affecting them.
Jerome Doraisamy
Last Friday, tens of thousands of Australian school children took to the streets in cities across the country to demand urgent action to combat the impact of climate change. The protests formed part of the global #SchoolStrike4Climate movement, led by Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg, in which millions of schoolchildren across the world marched.
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Australian Lawyers for Human Rights (ALHR) president Kerry Weste said: ALHR stands with children and young people around Australia as they exercise their internationally recognised human rights to peaceful assembly, freedom of speech and to be heard.”
“The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) explicitly establishes that all children have a right to be heard in all matters affecting them, as well as rights to freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of association and peaceful assembly.
“Indeed, respect for the views of children is one of the four core principles of the CRC and the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has emphasised a presumption in favour of children enjoying protest rights on an equal basis with adults.
“Historically, protests have often inspired positive social change and the advancement of human rights. Protests encourage the development of an engaged and informed citizenry and strengthen representative democracy by enabling direct participation in public affairs.”
A healthy, clean, sustainable environment, Ms Weste continued, is a prerequisite for the enjoyment of human rights.
“There can be no doubt that climate change is a real and immediate threat to the human rights of all Australians,” she said.
Last Friday, she said, Australian students let state and federal governments know how they feel “about an issue that will deeply affect their lives and those of the families they will grow up to have. All sides of politics should respect their democratic and internationally recognised right to do so”.
Ms Weste concluded by repeating ALHR’s call for the federal government to take urgent policy action designed to limit temperature increases to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, consistent with the Paris Agreement, and “live up to its obligations to ensure a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment in order to respect, protect and fulfil Australia’s international human rights obligations”.
Photo credit: @bradesposito (Twitter)
