Regional protection of human rights and the environment

This chapter focuses on how regional judiciaries in Africa, the Americas and Europe have addressed the protection of human rights and the environment. The chapter maps existing regional and sub-regional courts, their origins within the underlying regional integration schemes, their rationale and basis for engaging in human rights and environmental protection, and their contribution to the regional protection of human rights and the environment against the impacts of economic activities, which may have implications for the socio-economic aspects of regional integration. The chapter focuses on cases addressing economic, social and cultural rights, collective rights, land rights and environmental issues. The first section presents the global legal context in which regional courts have emerged, as well as the key differences in their roles in settling regional disputes and protecting human rights and the environment. The subsequent sections are organised geographically, and present the protection of human rights and the environment via the main regional and sub-regional courts in Africa, the Americas and Europe respectively. The main courts examined are as follows: Africa – African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights, East African Court of Justice (EACJ), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Community Court of Justice, Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal; Americas – Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Andean Tribunal of Justice (ATJ) of the Andean Community; Europe – European Court of Human Rights, Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). The chapter concludes by assessing the overall role of regional judiciaries in protecting human rights and the environment within the architecture and functioning of regional cooperation/integration schemes and assesses whether they fill the gaps in regional policymaking.