Chapter 4 unpacks the reasons why international human rights is currently incapable of adequately protecting the environmental rights of future generations. It begins by explaining that future generations are not legally recognised as people who possess human rights and governments are not obliged to protect them. Even if those rights were recognised, there are no clear pathways for enforcing them. As the chapter explains, international human rights violations can be litigated by ‘victims’, who are people directly affected by an actual or imminent violation. The law does not allow for legal claims on behalf of people who do not yet exist or for harms that have not yet occurred or are not imminent, even though they may be foreseeable. Without standing to bring a legal action, the rights of future generations cannot be litigated and enforced within international human rights bodies. Additional challenges exist in relation to proving a breach of the law and establishing a causal connection when the alleged harm has yet to occur. Finally, the chapter explains the difficult task of balancing competing human rights interests and obligations across generations. After outlining these numerous challenges, the following chapter will offer a possible way forward.

Building on the problems identified in Chapter 4, Chapter 5 presents a new theory and practice of environmental rights which it argues would better protect the rights of future generations. First, it outlines a theory of intergenerational responsibility for international human rights law, drawing on Edith Brown Weiss’s theory of intergenerational equity. The chapter takes the tripartite duties commonly used in international human rights laws (the duties to respect, protect and fulfil human rights) and gives them new meaning through the application of an intergenerational lens. The result is a typology of duties for states which can be used to articulate expectations and standards with respect to the rights of future generations. The chapter also outlines changes which are needed to the rules of standing and causation to enable the litigation of future generations’ environmental rights. The proposed changes are informed by existing principles of environmental law, including due diligence and the precautionary principle, which help to navigate questions regarding risk and uncertainty and enable a more meaningful application of human rights law to threats of future harm.

This chapter identifies and examines the elements determining the legal content of any given theory of, or positive law provision for, the human right to resist. It reviews the primary triggers or conditions for activation, indicating the ‘right to resist what’, including ‘tyranny’, ‘oppression’, and ‘other violations’. It reviews the secondary triggers or conditions for activation, indicating the ‘right to resist when’, in particular the necessity condition. It also reviews both aspects of the personal scope, being the rights-holders, indicating ‘who may resist’, and also the duty-bearers, indicating ‘whose corresponding duty’. It identifies a four-fold typology of legitimate ‘object and purpose’, or ‘right to resist why’, being for human rights enforcement, for self-defence, for self-determination, and for ‘peace’ or human security. The final element examined is the material scope of application, or ‘right to resist how’, identifying three competing approaches to permissible means, and affirming proportionality limitations and other applicable limitations in international human rights law and international criminal law, as well as grounds for discretionary non-exercise. This general analytical template for identification and comparison of elements and therefore content is then applied to the evidence of legal sources of the right considered in Chapters 5–7.

This chapter sets out to capture the practical phenomenon of sharing international obligations by developing a concept of shared obligations. In the stipulation of this concept, the chapter draws from and engages with various scenarios in practice that involve obligations incumbent on multiple states or international organizations, including those obligations that have been designated as ‘shared’, ‘joint’ or ‘collective’ in legal literature. By expanding on three elements that characterize a shared obligation, it is argued that the main characteristic that distinguishes obligations that are shared from obligations that are not shared is the existence of a connection between the bearers of an obligation in the performance of that obligation. It is this particular relationship between the bearers of a shared obligation that gives rise to questions regarding performance and international responsibility: who is bound to do what and, subsequently, who can be held responsible for what in case of a breach? All in all, qualifying a particular obligation as ‘shared’ brings such questions to the forefront, and thereby constitutes the first step towards addressing them.

This chapter summarizes the key arguments in the book. The chapter explains why a specific children’s rights focus is granted within the broader business and human rights debates and seeks to move beyond legal fiction to situate businesses as children’s rights duty-bearers. The chapter summarizes the arguments and analysis on how children and their rights are treated within existing normative frameworks on business and human rights. The legalization of business duties and norms specifically related to children’s rights within that context are sketched out. Insights from the four case illustrations are used in refining and defining the need for a forward-looking proposal on duty-bearing, which concludes the chapter.