Armando Rocha, Maria Antonia Tigre et Miriam Cohen, (2025) "Addressing Accountability in the IACtHR’s Advisory Opinion: The Question of Reparation and Loss and Damage" , VerfBlog.
Résumé : On July 3, 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) delivered a historic advisory opinion regarding States’ obligations in relation to the climate crisis (AO-32/25). The IACtHR was particularly articulate in qualifying States’ obligations under the right to a healthy environment as having a jus cogens nature (paras. 287ff), and in deriving from it a right to a healthy climate (para. 302), where an individual or collective violation would imply the international responsibility of States and their obligation to provide full reparation for the harm caused (para. 303). Yet, references to reparations in AO-32/25 are not limited to the context of international responsibility. The IACtHR clarified States’ obligations to ensure access to justice, provide domestic remedies, and repair individual and collective harm caused by climate change (paras. 556ff). This blog post examines three aspects of the discussion of remedies and reparations in AO-32/25: (1) the substantive duties to provide remedies and reparations, (2) how these duties build on the IACtHR’s jurisprudence on reparations, and (3) the IACtHR’s limited stance on loss and damage.
This content has been updated on 9 October 2025 at 21 h 03 min.