Know your
rights
‘The exercise of human rights helps to protect the environment, and a healthy environment helps to ensure the full enjoyment of human rights.‘
– Prof. John Knox
Human Rights and the environment
“We cannot fully enjoy our rights, including the rights to life, health, food, water, and
housing, in a degraded or unhealthy environment. Ideally, all EHRDs should be able to exercise their human rights to freedom of expression and association, to information, to participation in decision-making, and to effective remedies in order to help to protect the environment – and the rights that depend upon it – from unsustainable exploitation.
In this way, the relationship between human rights and the environment should be a virtuous circle: the exercise of human rights helps to protect the environment, and a healthy environment helps to ensure the full enjoyment of human rights.”
– Prof. John Knox
Explore your
rights
Use our online tool to read more about your human rights and their relationship with a clean, safe and healthy environment.
Claim your
rights
Read about the human rights mechanisms that can help you claim your rights.
The promotion and protection of universal human rights is one of the three pillars of the work of the United Nations. By definition therefore, the UN has a responsibility to support the work of EHRDs, and to help protect them from harm.
Human Rights Council’s Special Procedures mechanism UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies