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	Climate justice requires solidarity between nations. The law can help promote change by Mary Robinson International Bar Association (IBA)   Climate justice requires solidarity between nations. The law can help promote change, but it is up to us all to acknowledge our responsibilities.   When it comes to human suffering, the IPCC doesn’t mince its words. According to its latest report – the culmination of seven years of research and intense negotiations – climate change is on its way to causing “severe, pervasive and irreversible” damage on the world’s people, cultures, ecosystems and economies.   The report identifies a series of imminent risks, including illness, the breakdown of infrastructure and public services, food and water insecurity, and loss of rural livelihoods.   The human cost of global warming has a name: climate injustice. The remedy, then, is climate justice. Climate justice is not just the recognition that climate change is a matter of human rights and development; it also involves recognising that the victims of global warming are not responsible for it, nor can their actions alone halt it.   Take the Maldives islands in the Indian Ocean, coral atolls vulnerable to rising sea levels. In 2009, the country’s leaders and its people showed extraordinary foresight and courage as they embarked on a plan to become carbon neutral by 2020. But they cannot do it alone, they need the rest of the world to support them to achieve this goal.   Solidarity is at the core of climate justice. It is about sharing the benefits and burdens of climate change – and our response to it – fairly, making sure that the 1.3 billion people living without access to electricity and the 2.7 billion relying on biomass for cooking reap the benefits of access to clean, sustainable energy.   Climate justice also means sharing responsibility. Those most responsible must take the lead and show greatest ambition in their domestic climate actions and support for vulnerable countries. As we make the transition to a carbon neutral world, we should all participate in the decisions taken along the way. This is the challenge of climate justice, finding fair solutions to a global problem.   The concept of climate justice has an advocate in one of the world’s leading legal organisations. The International Bar Association (IBA), the global voice of the legal profession, has released a detailed report on the role of international law in addressing climate change.   Its assessment is frankly shocking. It finds that climate change touches on every area of international law – human rights, trade, investment, migration – and everywhere the law is coming up short.   Yet the report is also full of hope. The authors, a group of eminent lawyers from around the world, looked hard at the international legal system and found that more effective and coherent use of existing laws, rules and norms would inform better climate responses at the international and national level.   The report is also full of practical and realistic suggestions for reform, from sharpening state obligations under international human rights law to getting the World Trade Organisation to state clearly and publicly that trade policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gases do not fall foul of the rules.   Of particular interest is the report’s strong call for better human rights protections for the victims of climate change. States must take into account the fact that carbon emissions cost lives. Likewise, I back the report’s call for nations to have the courage to prepare the ground for a legally-binding commitment on climate change which will address not just climate change but climate justice.   The IBA’s backing for climate justice is pivotal, but we cannot leave climate justice to the lawyers. Climate justice is about all of us. It is about acknowledging our personal responsibility in an interconnected world. It is about acting outside the narrow confines of self-interest – even as it becomes clear that our self-interest can destroy the lives of our own children and grandchildren.   The IBA report is not the last word on climate justice, but it is an important and credible voice. It is a clarion call, and a sign that the word is spreading. The only solutions to climate change are fair solutions that protect human rights and uphold the rule of law.   http://www.ibanet.org/PresidentialTaskForceClimateChangeJustice2014Report.aspx Visit the related web page
	World needs to find alternatives to putting children in jail by Thomson Reuters Foundation   March 2015   Detention is inextricably linked with ill-treatment, children must be protected   The United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Méndez, today urged States to adopt new alternatives to the detention of children that fulfill the child’s best interests and the authorities’ obligation to protect them from torture or other ill-treatment.   “The detention of children is inextricably linked – in fact if not in law – with the ill-treatment of children, owing to the particularly vulnerable situation in which they have been placed that exposes them to numerous types of risk,” Mr. Méndez said during the presentation of his latest report to the UN Human Rights Council.   “The particular vulnerability of children imposes a heightened obligation of due diligence on States to take additional measures to ensure their human rights to life, health, dignity and physical and mental integrity,” he said. “However, the response to address the key issues and causes is often insufficient.”   The human rights expert noted that the deprivation of liberty of children is intended to be a last resort measure, to be used only for the shortest possible period of time, only if is in the best interests of the child, and limited to exceptional cases.   “Failure to recognize or apply these safeguards increases the risk of children being subjected to torture or other ill-treatment, and implicates State responsibility,” Mr. Méndez warned. He called for the adoption of “higher standards to classify treatment and punishment as cruel, inhuman or degrading in the case of children.”   In addition, the Special Rapporteur pointed out that inappropriate conditions of detention - including pretrial and post-trial incarceration as well as institutionalisation and administrative immigration detention- exacerbate the harmful effects on children deprived of their liberty.   “Within the context of administrative immigration enforcement, it is now clear that the deprivation of liberty of children based on their or their parents’ migration status is never in the best interests of the child,” he added. “It exceeds the requirement of necessity, becomes grossly disproportionate and may constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of migrant children.”   “States should, expeditiously and completely, cease the detention of children, with or without their parents, on the basis of their immigration status,” Mr. Méndez said.   “One of the most important sources of ill-treatment of children in those institutions is the lack of basic resources and proper government oversight,” the UN Special Rapporteur noted. “Regular and independent monitoring of places where children are deprived of their liberty is a key factor in preventing torture and other forms of ill-treatment,” he concluded. http://bit.ly/1BCdrsn   Jan. 2015   An estimated one million children are in jail around the world, a violation of child rights principles that say detention should only be a measure of last resort, a leading campaigner said this week.   Minors are often incarcerated for petty crimes, even before they have stood trial, or because they have been rounded up for vagrancy, homelessness or simply for being in need of care and protection, studies have shown.   The effects can be devastating. Children are likely to be exposed to abuse and violence, including from the police, security forces, their peers or adult detainees, said Vito Angelillo, chief executive of aid agency Terre des Hommes.   "Prison is the school of crime," Angelillo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview. "Putting a child in prison is a guarantee for turning a child into a criminal."   Poverty, family breakdown, lack of education and migration are among the underlying causes that cause children to come into conflict with the law.   Even though there are plenty of conventions and laws protecting children, many justice systems do not have child-sensitive procedures due to lack of resources, education or political will, Angelillo said.   Terre des Hommes is the co-organiser, along with the Swiss government, of the first World Congress on Juvenile Justice, a week-long conference attended by government officials, experts and non-governmental groups from more than 90 countries that opened in Geneva on Monday.   Terre des Hommes promotes restorative justice - an approach that focuses on the needs of offenders, victims and the affected community instead of using laws to punish the perpetrator.   "Restorative justice is not about impunity," said Angelillo. "It''s not a humanitarian act but it tries to restore the links between the victim, the perpetrator and the community to show them that there is another side to repairing the damage."   If a boy has stolen something, for example, restorative justice finds a way so that the perpetrator could do some work in the house of the family from which he stole instead of being incarcerated.   Most of the crime committed by children is an urban phenomenon, according to the United Nations, making the issue all the more pressing as cities balloon in size and population.   One of the countries where restorative justice has paid off is Peru, where high unemployment and a wide gap between rich and poor has contributed to the growth of gangs that control poorer neighbourhoods and recruit children and teenagers to work in drug trafficking.   Terre des Hommes is working with Peru''s public prosecutor and 300 adolescents, taking up their cases immediately after arrest and offering them legal advice and other support in open custody.   The programme has helped to reduce re-offending and only costs about a quarter of what it would cost to send the youngsters to prison, Angelillo said.   The U.N. children''s agency says the figure of one million incarcerated children is likely to be much higher, but there is insufficient data on the issue.   Among the 44 countries for which data were available, around 59 percent of children in detention had not been sentenced.   Only a minority of these children received a custodial sentence, suggesting that pre-trial detention is regularly used as a punishment, in violation of the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty according to law, as affirmed in the Convention of the Rights of the Child. 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