SNA (Sydney) — In a historic decision by the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the Australian government has been found to have violated the rights of its indigenous Torres Strait Islands populations by failing to protect them against climate change. This ruling could become a template for other indigenous groups around the world to secure their rights.

The Torres Strait Islands (known as Zenadh Kes by its indigenous population) are composed of five main island groups located north of mainland Australia near Papua New Guinea.

The islands are home to approximately 40,000 people, commonly referred to as “Traditional Owners,” who are believed to have lived there for tens of thousands of years. They are governed under the auspices of a central council located on Thursday Island.

In 2019, eight of these Traditional Owners, known as the Torres Strait 8, filed a human rights complaint to the United Nations against the Australian government. Broadly, the complaint asserted that Canberra had failed to protect the population by not adequately responding to the climate crisis.

They insisted that three specific human rights violations had occurred under the terms of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of which Australia is a signatory. These were the right to enjoy one’s culture; the right to be free from arbitrary interference with one’s private life, family, and home; and the right to life.

The UN experts were informed about the local impacts of the climate crisis, which had directly harmed Torres Strait Islanders’ livelihoods, cultures, and traditional ways of life. For example, family graves have been flooded and irreparably damaged, and traditional agricultural practices have been disrupted as storms worsen crop yields.

In September, the UN Human Rights Committee concluded that Australia had indeed violated the first two of these rights. It was further judged that Canberra has an obligation to pay compensation to the claimants and to secure their “continued safe existence on the islands.”

UN Human Rights Committee member Helene Tigroudja declared that it “marks a significant development as the committee has created a pathway for individuals to assert claims where national systems have failed to take appropriate measures to protect those most vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change on the enjoyment of their human rights.”

Human Rights Watch commented on the ruling by noting that it was “the first legal action brought by climate-vulnerable inhabitants of low-lying islands against a state.”

Our Islands, Our Home, a campaign organization led by Torres Strait Islanders, emphasized that the UN decision is historic for three main reasons–because it marks the first time that an international body has found that a country has violated human rights law through inadequate climate policy; that a nation-state has been found responsible for its emissions under international human rights law; and that a peoples’ right to culture has been found to be at risk from climate impacts.

Although the-then administration of Scott Morrison had called for the Torres Strait 8’s complaints to be dismissed, the new and more left-leaning Anthony Albanese government has promised to work alongside the islanders to improve responses to and protection from climate impacts.

Our Islands, Our Home is petitioning the Albanese government to act on several major issues, including funding for the local community to adapt to climate change, transitioning both the local and national economies to renewable energy sources within a decade, and encouraging other countries to quickly abandon their use of fossil fuels.

In the wake of the UN committee’s verdict, indigenous peoples and communities around the world have had hopes boosted that similar measures could be applied to their own climate-related challenges.

For example, approximately 87% of Alaskan Native villages are currently experiencing coastal and river erosion stemming from the melting of glaciers. Similarly, in Scandinavia, mild weather during the winter months is leading to declines in reindeer populations, which are vital to the very survival of indigenous Saami communities.

Far removed from these Arctic peoples, impacts have also been felt in Africa’s Kalahari Desert. According to the United Nations, these groups are “often forced to live around government drilled bores for water and depend on government support for their survival due to rising temperatures, dune expansion, and increased wind speeds, which have resulted in a loss of vegetation, and negatively impacted traditional cattle and goat farming practices.”

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