Heat Waves Are Killing Older Women. Are They Also Violating Their Rights?

NY Times no paywall link at end of snip.

Kudos to these women. The importance of their action is that it gives an "additional tool to name and shame these states and make their grievances visible and, eventually, enforceable."

Please note the case was filed a few years ago; it is now being heard. There was an even earlier iteration in 2016:

Heat Waves Are Killing Older Women. Are They Also Violating Their Rights?

A group of Swiss women over 64 have filed a lawsuit against Switzerland with Europe’s top human rights court, saying the country has violated their rights by failing to curb emissions.

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“This will have a domino effect,” said Annalisa Savaresi, a senior lecturer for environmental law at the University of Stirling, in Scotland, who has studied climate change litigation. “It’s the first of its kind to be heard, but there are many others in the pipeline.”

The litigants in the Swiss case include four women who said they had heart and respiratory diseases that put them at risk of death on hot days.

The crux of the complaint is a charge that the Swiss government’s failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to prevent global warming of 2 degrees Celsius is at odds with its obligations under the European Human Rights Convention. Those include rights to life and autonomy, given that older women have been proved to be particularly vulnerable to heat-related illnesses.

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A ruling in the KlimaSeniorinnen’s case (poster's note: KlimaSniorinnen means Senior Women for Climate Protection Switzerland) is not expected until 2024. The court is also considering several other climate change-related cases, including one filed by a group of young Portuguese who have accused 33 countries of not upholding their human rights obligations by failing to curb emissions, and by a French citizen who has brought a similar case against the French government.

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No paywall link to NY Times story.