Triggered by unprecedented monsoon rainfall and glacial melting, #Pakistan’s cataclysm is a terrible reminder that, when we talk about climate change, we’re not discussing some future environmental dystopia.
We’re living it now.
As a country particularly vulnerable to climate change, Pakistan is on the frontlines of this reality.
#Pakistan faces rates of warming well above the global average and, with that, extreme climate events are more likely to be more frequent and more intense.
For marginalized and at-risk populations in particular – including older people, people with disabilities, people in poverty, and rural populations – such events are also more devastating and more deadly.
The connection between climate change and human rights protection should be obvious, both locally and globally.
Pakistan’s government has a human rights obligation to prevent foreseeable harms from climate change & extreme weather events. They should provide assistance both to those communities already affected by these floods & to those most at-risk from future catastrophic events.
And with the same logic, we can also say that ALL governments have a human rights obligation to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to avert even more catastrophic effects of climate change.
The sad fact is, Pakistan is not historically one of the countries most responsible for climate change, but its people are nevertheless suffering greatly from it.
Top greenhouse gas emitters in Europe and North America need to face up to their outsized impact on Earth’s atmosphere over the decades and support vulnerable countries’ adaptation efforts.
Russian & Russian-affiliated militaries' forcible transfers of Ukrainian civilians to Russia & to Russian-occupied parts of #Ukraine, are a serious violation of the laws of war that constitute war crimes & potential crimes against humanity.
The overall scale of the illegal forced transfers remains unclear, but it appears massive...
In July, the Russian News Agency (TASS) reported that over 2.8 million Ukrainians had entered Russia from Ukraine, although this number has not been independently confirmed, and it’s likely not every transfer would qualify as forced.
UN rights chief Bachelet said a year ago that her office was finalising a report on the situation in #Xinjiang (crimes against humanity) but, unless there's some surprise in the next few hours, she'll leave office having not published it.
While you're waiting for the UN rights chief's report, read ours on how the Chinese government is committing crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the northwest region of #Xinjiang:
Estonia, Finland, Czechia & other EU members have stopped or severely limited visas for Russian citizens. There’s a discussion about whether the whole EU should do so, too.
Here’s a 🧵 with our take…
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Some EU member states have been calling for the EU to issue a blanket ban on tourist visas for Russian citizens for various reasons, including to shatter ordinary Russians' sense of “business as usual” given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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The visa issue will be on the agenda of the regular meeting of EU foreign ministers on 31 August.
States do not have legal obligations to provide tourist or other visas.
But a blanket ban would be wrong for several reasons…
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One question I get asked maybe more than any other is:
❓ Can Putin himself be tried for war crimes?
➡️ Answer: yes.
It's not just about who pulls the trigger or gives the direct order to pull the trigger...
Of course, if you can show Putin ordered specific war crimes, then it's straightforward, but that's not the only way.
Prosecutors need only prove that Putin (and/or other Kremlin officials) knew or should have known of such crimes by troops under their command, and failed to stop them.