RWI sessions at COP28:
Exploring Slow-Onset Disaster & Mobility Risks from Human Rights Perspective
But, what is COP?
COP stands for ‘Conference of the Parties’, and is the supreme decision-making body of the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted in 1992. All states that are Parties to this Convention attend the COP. At the summit, they will review the implementation of the Convention and any other legal instruments that the COP adopts, including the Paris Agreement from 2015. They will also take decisions necessary to promote the effective implementation of the Convention, including institutional and administrative arrangements.
‘The Parties’ refers to the 197 states that have signed the UNFCCC adopted in 1992. For almost three decades, world governments have gathered every year at the COP, with the exception of 2020 when COP was postponed to 2021 due to COVID-19, to forge a global response to the climate emergency.
During COP 21 in 2015, the binding international treaty ‘The Paris Agreement’ was adopted by almost all countries in the world. By signing the agreement, states committed to submit their national plans on how to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. This is widely known as the ‘Nationally Determined Contributions’ (NDCs).
COP28 comes at a decisive moment for international climate action. Temperature records are being repeatedly broken and climate impacts felt in unprecedented wildfires, floods, storms and droughts worldwide. The UN’s global stocktake synthesis report shows much more must be done to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. COP28 presents a critical opportunity to put the world on a more sustainable path. Additionally, this years COP will mark the conclusion of the first global stocktake (GST), the main mechanism through which progress under the Paris Agreement is assessed. It is clear the world is not on track to meeting the agreement’s goals. The hope is that governments at COP28 will come up with a roadmap to accelerate climate action. Other critical tasks facing negotiators in Dubai include agreeing on a framework for the Paris Agreement’s global goal on adaptation (GGA).
Meet us at COP28 in UAE
Windi Arini
Windi is a Programme Officer at RWI in Jakarta. She manages activities on localizing human rights in the context of SDGs in Asia Pacific and RWIs engagement with young people in the region. Her multidimensional role also allows her to oversee the national programmes in collaboration with the Indonesian Ministry of Law and Human Rights.
She graduated from Atma Jaya Catholic University (Faculty of Law) in 2010 and dedicated the following years working at a law firm targeting capacity building for the Indonesian military. As a committed and passionate young professional, she taught foundational knowledge on international humanitarian law to the Indonesian military.
After obtaining her master’s degree in Theory and Practice of Human Rights from the University of Oslo, she spent almost 4 years as a human rights officer at the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta. She worked on various thematic areas including children and women’s rights, business human rights, as well as the rights of persons with disabilities. She provided technical support and managed projects for the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) and the ASEAN Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (ASEAN-IPR).
When Windi is not in the office, she enjoys reading, traveling, and is very fond of spicy food.
Claudia Ituarte-Lima
Dr. Claudia Ituarte-Lima is Leader of the Human Rights and the Environment thematic area and senior researcher at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law.
She is an international public lawyer and scholar with direct experience in international law and policy making. For the last 20 years, she has worked on human rights and environmental law (in particular biodiversity and climate change). She holds a PhD (University College London) and a MPhil (University of Cambridge).
Her work unites legal analysis and sustainability science for examining environmental and human rights governance challenges and innovative levers to address them. She has bridged the human rights and biodiversity “communities of practice” through leading research such in the Biodiversa project on safeguarding ecosystems and human rights through law and regulation. She has also experience designing multiactor dialogue processes and blended learning courses for judges, National Human Rights Institutions, environmental human rights defenders and United Nations staff. Her research expertise is complemented by her experiential learning by living in Sweden, Mexico, Kenya, Japan and Canada and the Peruvian and Ecuadorian Amazon region.
Dr. Ituarte-Lima has analysed the interplay between laws at distinct geographical scales. Her research ranges from empirically-based case studies in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Eastern Africa, to legal analysis examining the interactions between international legal regimes in particular between the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and international human rights treaties. Her work has been published in English, Spanish, Burmese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese.
She serves as regional deputy director for Latin America of the Global Network on Human Rights and Environment, acts as an expert advisor to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Environment and was a member of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) expert group in policy support tools and methodologies.
Before working at RWI, she worked at the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University and she has held visiting status including at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at University of British Columbia in Canada, the Environmental Change Institute at University of Oxford in the UK, the Global Centre of Excellence Programme in Conflict Studies at Osaka University in Japan, the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) in Ecuador and ECOSUR in Mexico.
For further updates on her research, please refer to her Research profile:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Claudia-Ituarte-Lima
https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/claudia-ituarte-lima
Danang Aditya Nizar
Danang Aditya Nizar has years of experience working in the international development sector, with various thematic areas such as education, youth engagement, disaster risk reduction, displacement, gender, and sustainable agriculture.
He started his career in the sector with UNOCHA, supporting the Indonesian National Disaster Management Agency in preparing the Disaster Risk Management Baseline Status Report, as mandated by the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030. He also has experience in emergency response, where he was deployed to implement a Displacement Tracking Matrix with IOM during the Mt. Agung eruption in 2017. He was also a certified trainer of camp coordination and camp management modules with IOM.
Danang holds a Master’s degree in Anthropology of Development and Social Transformation from the University of Sussex, UK, with a specialization in refugees, displacement, and humanitarian response.
In his spare time, Danang Aditya Nizar remotely manages a bed and breakfast in Bukittinggi, West Sumatera.
Nikita Lourenço Calling
Nikita Lourenço Calling currently serves as the Communications Officer at the RWI Head Office in Lund, leveraging her comprehensive academic background and professional experiences to excel in her role. With a Master’s degree in Human Rights and Multi-level Governance from Padova University, Italy, and a Bachelor’s degree in Development Studies and Political Science from Lund University, she has sharpened her expertise in these areas.
Nikita’s previous professional journey encompasses valuable internships at embassies, NGOs and extensive volunteering experiences. These opportunities have strengthened her understanding of diverse perspectives within the public sector and deepened her commitment to human rights causes.
Driven by her unwavering passion for human rights and her profound belief in the transformative power of communication, Nikita has dedicated herself to merging these interests and making human rights language understood and accessible for all. By leveraging her creative mindset, she recognises her current position as a pivotal opportunity to disseminate meaningful messages and foster greater awareness and understanding of pressing global issues.
Matthew Scott
Matthew Scott is senior researcher and leader of the Human Rights and the Environment thematic area at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. He is also adjunct senior lecturer at the Faculty of Law at Lund University. His work focuses on integrating social science perspectives with international legal standards to promote context-sensitive, human rights-based law, policy and practice relating to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. His primary area of expertise concerns migration and displacement in the context of disasters and climate change, on which he has published a monograph entitled Climate Change, Disasters and the Refugee Convention (CUP 2020), an edited volume entitled Climate Change, Disasters and Internal Displacement in Asia and the Pacific: A Human Rights-Based Approach (Routledge 2021) and a range of book chapters and academic articles. Current research interests concern the role of local authorities in addressing climate- and disaster-related migration and displacement.
He holds a PhD in Public International Law from Lund University and a MA in Social Anthropology of Development from SOAS. He practiced immigration and asylum law in London before entering academia. He is a member of the advisory committee of the Platform on Disaster Displacement and the editorial board of the Yearbook of International Disaster Law, and a founding member of the Nordic Network on Climate Related Displacement and Mobility.
At Lund University he convenes the introduction to human rights law course and the short course on human rights law, the environment and climate change on the LLM in international human rights law programme. He also lectures on the MSc programme in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Matthew is also actively engaged in international collaboration initiatives and is currently working with municipal authorities in Nairobi, Kampala and Freetown to explore human rights-based approaches to addressing climate-related displacement.
For further updates on his research, please refer to his Research profile:
https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/matthew-scott
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