On April 8 of this year, as part of the Lund Sustainability Week, a lecture entitled “Why the UN Human Rights System matters for Sustainability” was held. In this space organized by the Faculty of Law of Lund University and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights, Neshan Gunasekera and Christine Evans, participated as representatives of the institute and also Brittis Edman as representative of the Swedish Institute of Human Rights.
Amanda Kron from the Law Faculty introduced the event by providing an overview of different UN human rights mechanisms and how these are increasingly engaging on sustainability, environment and climate change.
During the lecture, Christine highlighted the role of Indigenous Peoples in the defense of their territories in the face of serious environmental threats. She emphasized the responsibility of the international community to listen to, promote, and incorporate the rights and knowledge and lessons learned from Indigenous Peoples to ensure a comprehensive defense of biodiversity and climate action through on a human rights-based approach.
On the other hand, Brittis, spoke about the work of the National Human Rights Institutes in the tasks of Climate Litigation; protection of environmental defenders and evolution of Human Rights. She also spoke about the interaction of national, regional and international systems to ensure real environmental democracy at all levels.
Neshan was able to deepen in the importance of changing to an ecological way of seeing human rights that recovers the cosmovisions of indigenous peoples and other defenders that have contributed to the attribution of rights to actors of nature such as rivers or mountains for their protection through the principles of Earth trusteeship. Similarly, Neshan was able to talk about the importance of incorporating other civil society actors, such as youth, in the struggle for climate justice leading to the UN Summit of the Future 2024.