Using a framework of human rights and transitional justice for post-conflict environmental protection and remediation

The chapter analyses examples of post-conflict environmental damage and suggests how human rights legal mechanisms could provide vital assistance in their remedy. Environmental remediation in the post-conflict context tends to emanate from environmental obligations, if it is recognized at all. Transitional justice mechanisms and human rights obligations, however, are developing in terms of environmental protection. Environmental damage is, clearly, a human rights issue, especially in the protection of survival resources, such as water and food, as well as health-which are vital in a post-conflict context. Human rights can also help address toxic remnants and natural resource depletion. With the expansion of economic, social, and cultural rights to incorporate environmental dimensions, and even what would traditionally be viewed as pure environmental concerns at times, such a framework could provide strong legal obligations on states to undertake environmental clean-up and restoration-and strong mechanisms to review state actions and ensure environmental remediation. © Karen Hulme, 2017.