In February-March 2024, the Hub has contributed to three international processes on the human right to development, the human right to education, and the human rights that depend on land and natural resources with a view to highlighting relevant contributions from the UN General Comment no 26 on Children’s Rights and the Environment, with a Focus on Climate Change (GC26).

Specifically, the Hub submitted written inputs to the: UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development for his forthcoming report on the right to development of children and future generations; and Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) for a forthcoming report on climate change impacts on the realization of the equal enjoyment of the right to education by every girl, and a note on “Frequently Asked Questions on Land and Human Rights.”

Girls’ right to education and climate change

The Hub’s submission to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on climate change impacts on the realization of the equal enjoyment of the right to education by every girl underscored the negative impacts of climate change on the ocean, including on marine biodiversity, as well as the role of a healthy ocean in climate change mitigation and adaptation (Morgera et al, 2023).

The submission highlighted:

• a specific need to focus on girls’ enjoyment of education on climate change in the context of the ocean-climate nexus, and generally girls’ human rights dependent on a healthy ocean;
• evidence on gendered access to outdoor activities, particularly when related to the transmission of Indigenous and other forms of knowledge that are deeply intertwined with marine ecosystems, and that should thus be assessed from the perspective of girls’ human right to education, to a healthy environment and as well as other human rights;
• the need to protect girls from misinformation about environmental risks and harm through education and enabling environments (GC 26 paras 70 and 27), which should be interpreted also to include understanding of the biodiversity-climate nexus and the ocean-climate nexus (Shields et al, 2023; Strand et al 2023; Morgera, 2024);
• evidence in Ghana that due to efforts aimed at controlling overfishing some families withdraw girls from school because of financial constraints (Ansah & Oduro, under review; Oduro, 2010), on the basis of patriarchal constructs valuing male education over female education; and
• lack of gender-disaggregated data in the Caribbean challenges the meaningful participation of women and girls in climate debates (Lancaster, Mitchell and Nurse, under review).

The submission also adapted the One Ocean Hub recommendations on ocean literacies to ensure the protection of children’s rights to education, development, culture and a healthy environment (Strand et al 2023), to the specific needs of girls’ education on climate change, recommending:

• build on a holistic understanding of girls’ human right to a healthy environment;
• consider the dependence of girls’ development on a healthy environment and ocean;
• make explicit considerations of girls’ cultural rights and recognise a plurality of knowledge systems, to avoid discrimination;
• integrate and recognise a broad spectrum of environmental justice issues;
• contextualise environmental education programmes, curricula and education processes – particularly consider how and why girls do not have equal access to education; 
• engage in vernacular two-way communication processes;
• co-develop environmental education curricula for girls with girls; and
• provide girls with opportunity to participate, not responsibility to participate.

Finally, the submission underscored that all actors involved in the UN Decade for Ocean Science to commit to protect and promote  girls’ human right to environmental and climate change education in ocean literacy initiatives.

The submission was prepared by Hub Director Elisa Morgera (University of Strathclyde, UK), Alana Malinde S.N. Lancaster (University of West Indies, Barbados), Georgina Yaa Oduro (University of Cape Coast, Ghana) and Mia Strand (Ocean Nexus Fellow at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa and University of Strathclyde).

The right to development of children and future generations

The Hub made a submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development for the 2024 report on the right to economic, social, political and cultural development of children and future generations, welcoming the Rapporteur’s focus on how their human rights are impacted by decisions taken by the present adult generation, and how to ensure their meaningful participation in decision-making processes at all levels.

The submission underscored that the right to development of children and future generations is closely interlinked with a healthy ocean in terms of food, nutrition, health, water cycle, and climate regulation as well as to cultural rights that are inextricably linked to a healthy ocean (Strand et al 2023). The Hub thus recommended that the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development emphasize that the UN General Comment no 26 on Children’s Rights and the Environment, with a Focus on Climate Change, clarifies that a healthy ocean (in terms of “marine pollution” and “fisheries”, as well as with implicit references to marine biodiversity and ocean-climate nexus) is essential for the protection of children’s human rights, including their right to development.

The submission also underscored that children’s and future generations’ human rights are negative impacted by unsustainable and exclusionary decisions on the ocean, including decisions on the blue economy, just transition and marine spatial planning. Hub researchers therefore urged the Special Rapporteur to reflect further on how to decolonize and democratize sustainable development processes on the basis of the inter-dependencies of children’s human right to a healthy environment (including a healthy ocean), the right to development and cultural rights. Attention was drawn on role of children’s human right to be heard in the context of national and international process on sustainable development, including a healthy ocean (Shields et al, 2023). The submission raised specific concerns in relation to decisions on large-scale fisheries (Nakamura et al, 2022) and deep-seabed mining (Morgera and Lily, 2022), who can have significant negative impacts on biodiversity and climate change, and on the children’s rights dependent on a healthy environment.

The submission made reference to the Hub’s model to implement children’s meaningful participation in international for a at the ocean-climate nexus we recommend that the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development reflect on the need for the implementation of the 2023 “High Seas Agreement” or the Agreement on Marine Biodiversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to provide for meaningful consideration of children’s best interests and for the new BBNJ institutions to respect children’s right to be heard (Shields et al, 2023).

To that end, Hub researchers recommended that the Special Rapporteur clarify State obligations on child defenders also in the context of biodiversity, climate change and the ocean, and the need to:

• integrate considerations on children’s human rights to development, culture, a healthy environment, as well as the role of child defenders in ocean literacy materials/programmes;
• build the capacity of human rights experts to support child ocean defenders; and
• build the capacity of ocean experts to respect children’s human rights, particularly children’s rights to development, culture and a healthy environment; and recognize and support child defenders.

The submission was prepared by Hub Director Elisa Morgera (University of Strathclyde, UK), Mia Strand (Ocean Nexus Fellow at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa and University of Strathclyde) and Alana Malinde S.N. Lancaster (University of West Indies, Barbados).

Land and Human Rights

The OHCHR is developing with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and UN-Habitat a joint publication to unpack the land and human rights nexus, with a view to promoting better policies by improving understanding of the fundamental relevance of land to peace and security, human rights and development. The note focuses on the links between human rights and the surface of the earth, the materials beneath, the air above and all the natural resources attached to it, such as forests and coastal waters.

Hub Director Elisa Morgera was invited to an online consultation on the outline and first draft of the note, and made the following suggestions to ensure integration of children’s human rights, including at the ocean-climate nexus, in the note:

• the human rights of Indigenous children, as well as children in small-scale fishing communities and other peasant communities are dependent on continued access to traditional land and coastal waters (GC26, paras 49 and 58);
• every child’s right to play and education is dependent on access to healthy land and coastal waters;
• the GC26 reflects on the importance of environmental degradation of land for children’s rights, by saying “soil and land degradation …increase[s] child mortality, especially among children under 5 years of age, and contribute[s] to the prevalence of disease, impaired brain development and subsequent cognitive deficits. The effects of climate change, including water scarcity, food insecurity, vector-borne and waterborne diseases, the intensification of air pollution and physical trauma linked to both sudden- and slow-onset events, are disproportionately borne by children’(GC26, para. 40); and
• the GC26 also underscores business responsibility to respect children’s human right to a healthy environment by preventing the degradation of land and waters, including through unsustainable fishing practices. It also notes that “The impacts of business activities and operations may undermine the ability of children and their families to adapt to the impacts of climate change, for example, where land has been degraded, thereby exacerbating climate stress.” (GC26, para. 79)

Outlook

Hub Director Elisa Morgera and Alana Malinde SN Lancaster will contribute to an invitation-only workshop on “Children’s rights and the right to a healthy environment – intersections and opportunities” (11-12 April 2024, Oñati, Spain) with papers on, respectively: “The interplay of children’s human rights, the human right to a healthy environment and the human right to science: shedding new light on States’ individual and collective obligations on scientific cooperation and on capacity, financial and technological solidarity’ and ‘Bridging The Gaps Created Conflicts & Disasters To A Child’s Right To A Healthy Ocean Environment: Reflections On Blue (Ocean) Crimes & The Contribution Of International [Child] Law’. In addition, Elisa Morgera will deliver a presentation titled “Children’s climate justice is also about biodiversity, the ocean and the human right to science” at a “Child/youth-friendly climate justice: Progress and Opportunities” conference (30 September-1 October 2024, Cork, Ireland). Meanwhile, Hub early-career researcher Mia Strand has started a one-year research project on cognitive justice and equity in ocean literacies and children’s rights to a healthy ocean.