Is the Paris Agreement a human rights treaty?

This chapter investigates the relationship between the Paris Agreement and human rights through a discussion of John Knox’s characterization of the Paris Agreement as a human rights treaty. The text of the Paris Agreement contains few and rather ineffective references to human rights. The high point is a recital which merely confirms that the Paris Agreement does not set aside existing human rights obligations. More fundamentally, the objective of the Paris Agreement cannot convincingly be framed as being distinctively about the protection of human rights, for two reasons. First, it is unclear whether human rights can be applied in the absence of actual or potential individual victims. Doing so would betray human rights law’s emphasis on the protection of individuals, and would set it against policies aimed at the protection of the public interest, such as policies on the mitigation of climate change. Second, if the impacts of climate change affect the enjoyment of human rights, so do response measures – and often in more tangible ways.