LONDON. They have been complaining for years to the government of Australia, which has not listened to them. Now a group of inhabitants of the Torres Strait islands has turned to the UN, claiming that their human rights have been violated due to the indifference of the Australian authorities to climate change. It is the first legal recourse of this kind ever: a population that cites the risk of being submerged by rising oceans as an attack on human rights recognized by international conventions.
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by our correspondent Federico Rampini
The dispute starts in a tiny and remote region of the world. The Torres archipelago is made up of 274 islands located in the strait of the same name. It belongs administratively to the Australian state of Queensland. Only 14 of the islands are inhabited, for a population of just over 4 thousand people, made up exclusively of indigenous people of Melanesian origin. Once these strips of land that emerged from the water were a natural bridge connecting the Cape York peninsula, the northeastern tip of Australia, with Papua New Guinea: some of the islands are actually closer to the latter than to the Australian territory. First explored by the Portuguese navigator Luiz Baez de Torres, who gave them his name, then annexed to Great Britain by Captain James Cook in the colonial period, for forty years they have been asking for recognition of their territorial autonomy, partly recognized by the Australian government in 1994.
Over the past two decades, as global awareness of the risks of climate change has grown, the inhabitants of the strait have realized that, like other tropical archipelagos, their future is severely threatened by rising waters caused by melting. of ice, one of the consequences of climate change.
Their appeals had not so far received enough attention from the Canberra government. And so now they have made the decision, historic from the point of view of environmental claims, to appeal to the UN Human Rights Commission: the first legal battle launched in the world by a people to protect their homes and their survival from catastrophic effects. climate.
Islanders argue that Australia has violated their right “to life” because it has not adequately addressed climate change. The archipelago has suffered frequent floods and erosion of its coastline in recent years due to the rise in sea level, which increases by 8 millimeters per year. “Our fear is to be forced to leave this place we love, abandoning our genealogy, our roots, our homes,” Yessie Mosbi, one of the inhabitants who signed the lawsuit, told the BBC. “The latest flood wiped out my village cemetery, including my grandmother’s grave. I found some of his bones under a palm tree some time later. We don’t want to end up in the same way ”.
Margaret Young, the Melbourne lawyer who represents Torres residents in the UN appeal, comments: “This lawsuit sets an important precedent in linking human rights with the impact of climate change.” The recommendations of the UN Human Rights Commission are not binding on member states, but they can affect the verdicts of national courts. “We are afraid of having to leave” adds Mosbi. The appeal asks Australia to radically reduce emissions of harmful gases and invest 20 million dollars for the protection of the archipelago’s coasts. The paradox is that the Torres Islands would be a wonderful earthly paradise to protect. “We have not contributed in the slightest to the pollution that causes climate change – concludes Mosbi – but we have become its victims”. Although the Australian government has pledged to cut emissions by 25 percent by 2030, the UN says it is not meeting the targets. Canberra replies that it cannot be held responsible for a global problem. Meanwhile, the islands are sinking.
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