The National Environment Management Authority (“NEMA”) demolished the petitioner’s house after serving notice that his residential property was in a wetland. He filed a Constitutional Petition in the Constitutional Court maintaining that his rights over his property and his right to a hearing and to an appeal had been violated. He claimed that Sections 67, …Read more

The plaintiff Urgenda, a foundation committed to a more sustainable society, brought a claim on behalf of over 800 individuals against the defendant, the state of the Netherlands, regarding climate change. Specifically, the plaintiff asked the court to rule that it would be unlawful for the defendant not to reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by …Read more

The governor of the Miyazaki Prefecture granted permission for a company that collects, transports, and disposes of industrial waste to establish an industrial waste treatment facility. When the company applied for permission, it submitted a document called the “Environmental Impact Survey Report,” which detailed the survey results regarding the impact of the establishment of the …Read more

This case concerned the Kichwa nation of the Ecuadorian Amazon, which encompassed two Peoples who shared the same linguistic and cultural tradition. The State of Ecuador had granted a private oil company a permit to carry out oil exploration and exploitation of activities in the ancestral territory of the Kichwa nation. The State did not …Read more

The plaintiff brought the case to the First Instance Criminal Court of Lomas de Zamora [Juzgado de Garantias n° 3 de Lomas de Zamora] against three workers of the painting factory “MATRA” who presumably threw toxic substances in an area located in Esteban Echeverría, violating Law 24 051. The First Instance Criminal Court of Lomas de …Read more

The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), a non-governmental organization, filed a case against the Federal Republic of Nigeria alleging human rights violations as a result of the government’s failure to ensure adequate environmental protection in the Niger Delta due to oil spillage. SERAP alleged that decades of oil prospection and exploitation by private corporations …Read more

This report addresses the admissibility of a petition that alleged the United States failed to fulfill its obligations under the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man (the Declaration) and the American Convention on Human Rights (the Convention), including protection of the right to health and equality before law. Mossville, Louisiana is a …Read more

B, a Romanian national, was sentenced to ten years in prison for fraud by the Court of Appeal of Timisoara. In January 2003 B lodged an application with the European Court of Human Rights based on the conditions of his detention in the prisons of Arad and Timisoara. B alleged that Romania violated Article 3 (prohibition of torture) of the European …Read more

The Public Ombudsman brought a preventive action against the Ministry of Housing, Zoning and the Environment and the Municipal Government of Montevideo, for lead contamination in the soil of the neighborhood of La Teja. The contamination was discovered in 2001, and a number of measures were taken by relevant public agencies and by the executive …Read more

Petitioners alleged that environmental pollution from a metallurgical complex in La Oroya, Peru caused a series of violations of the rights of community members. They alleged Peru was guilty by act and omission for its failure to control the metallurgical complex; its lack of supervision of the facility’s operation; and its failure to adopt measures …Read more