Description

Charter on Industrial Hazards and Human Rights

Signs of optimism about environmental justice come in the form of the Charter of Rights Against Industrial Hazards. Hope does not derive simply from the Charter itself; if anything, it is further evidence of a seemingly intractable problem. It comes from the extraordinary success of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal in creating a forum for testing the arguments that underlie the quest for justice for environmental victims. The Tribunal’s meetings were not empty talking shops where academics simply reproduced further kilobytes of problematization and prescription, questioned only by other academics from the same intellectual club. It was a dynamic forum in which activists, victims, industrialists, lawyers, medics, and other professionals came together with academics to present individual cases that were then challenged vigorously as in a court of law. The result is not only a cogent and unified view, but also a robust construction of a necessary extension of human rights.

environmental law, environmental protection, human rights, occupational hazards, occupational health and safety, United Nations, workers’ rights

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 23, No. 4 (1996): 167-181