ABSTRACT
The country of origin has the primary responsibility to respect, to protect, and to fulfil the human rights of Environmentally Displaced Persons (EDPs). The OHCHR message on disaster risk reduction neatly summarises and provides context to the discussion of the protection of EDPs and states' corresponding obligations: All states have positive human rights obligations to protect human rights. The right to life is well established in major international and regional frameworks, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the African Charter on Human and People's Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, and the European Convention on Human Rights. The Human Rights Committee has reinforced this idea in its General Comment No.31, acknowledging that states have both positive and negative obligations. Particular communities are especially at risk, including those in the Arctic and coastal regions. These communities already suffer the impacts of environmental change on their right to life.
