Addressing Climate Change Through a Human Rights-based Approach and the Practice of the United Nations

The increasing concerns in respect to the adverse impact on human societies and ecosystems stemming from the climate change have led several bodies of the United Nations (UN) to highlight the devastating consequences of the climate change on different human rights, as well as the multifaceted relationship between climate change and human rights and the growing needs for human rights-compliant solutions to the climate crisis. This paper aspires to review the evolution of the UN practice as far as the interconnections between human rights and climate change international legal regimes, in order to review if and to what extent human rights protection has been taken into account in the process of 'configuring' the contemporary international legal system on climate change and, conversely, to assess the extent to which climate change has 'broken-in' the international mechanisms of protection of human rights existing at UN level.