Abstract

On 21 July 2022, the Human Rights Committee delivered its decision in the Torres Strait Islanders case and condemned Australia for the severe impacts which climate change has had on the human rights of the indigenous communities living in the Islands of Torres Strait. For the first time, a hu-man rights supervisory body ascertained the State’s responsibility for not having provided effective instruments to hinder and revert the worldwide phenomenon of climate change and its effects. By so doing, the ‘rights turn’ that had already begun in domestic climate litigation expanded to include a global scale. Then, the purpose of the present article is to analyse the Committee’s decision, high-lighting the opportunities that could result from the interplay between human rights and climate change, while underlining the aspects still in need of further elaboration.