Monitoring States’ Compliance with their Human Rights Obligations, in the Context of Climate Change

This guide by the Center for International Environmental Law provides a structured framework for organizations to draft parallel reports to UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies (HRTBs). It explains how to document the links between a state's climate inaction or ill-designed climate responses and its failure to meet human rights obligations, offering specific recommendations on content, formatting, and submission deadlines for various committees.

• A parallel report to a Human Rights Treaty Body (HRTB) should be concise, ideally between 6 and 8 pages, and avoid subjective or inflammatory language. To increase credibility, the guide recommends using footnotes with links and employing graphs or pictures when presenting technical data or trends.
• The guide suggests a five-part structure for the report: an Executive Summary; a section on relevant human rights obligations linked to climate change; a section on the adverse impacts of climate change on human rights in the specific country; a section on shortcomings of the national climate response; and a final section connecting these circumstances to specific state obligations under the treaty.
• When describing national climate responses, reports should objectively detail commitments such as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement and then argue why these are inadequate to protect human rights. The guide identifies specific high-risk policy areas in certain countries, including fracking in Argentina and the United Kingdom, financial institution investments in Switzerland, fossil fuel extraction and exports in Australia, Canada, and Norway, and deforestation in Brazil and the DRC.
• To maximize the impact of the report, authors should suggest the exact wording they want the Committee to use in its List of Issues Prior to Reporting (LOI(PR)) or Concluding Observations (COBs). Because climate change typically only occupies one or two paragraphs in these final documents, the guide advises limiting the number of suggestions to increase the likelihood of adoption.

APA

Center for International Environmental Law (2020). Monitoring States’ Compliance with their Human Rights Obligations, in the Context of Climate Change. https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Template_LeveragingHRTBs_Climate_2.pdf

Chicago

Center for International Environmental Law. Monitoring States’ Compliance with their Human Rights Obligations, in the Context of Climate Change. 2020. https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Template_LeveragingHRTBs_Climate_2.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Center for International Environmental Law |title=Monitoring States’ Compliance with their Human Rights Obligations, in the Context of Climate Change |date=January 2020 |url=https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Template_LeveragingHRTBs_Climate_2.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{centerforinternationalenvironmentallaw2020monitoring, author = {{Center for International Environmental Law}}, title = {{Monitoring States’ Compliance with their Human Rights Obligations, in the Context of Climate Change}}, institution = {Center for International Environmental Law}, year = {2020}, month = jan, url = {https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Template_LeveragingHRTBs_Climate_2.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }