Dear GNHRE network members,
You will be aware, perhaps, that the GNHRE is involved with setting up the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal on Fracking. The team running it needs your help! This is an invitation to contact us if you might be interested
in serving as lead attorney (pro bono) in the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Session on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change in May. The Tribunal is completely virtual so no travel is necessary.
Responsibilities are not as daunting as you might first think. The lead attorney will only have to provide an hour or so of opening overview and argument on the first day (May
14th) and an hour or so of concluding remarks and closing argument on the final day (May
18th). In addition the judges have requested a session on
Thursday afternoon (May
17th) with judges and attorneys only. Judges see this as a “conceptual” session with questions and discussion among judges and attorneys exploring how human rights norms intersect with fracking and climate change issues and with
environmental issues more broadly.
During the morning and afternoon sessions between Monday morning
and Friday a
range of personal and expert testimony will be presented as well as reports from earlier pre-Tribunal hearings, amicus briefs and arguments. Some of the scheduled topics are listed below. Note that the asterisk marks the sessions that the lead attorney leads
or is involved with.
If any of this sounds interesting to you and you would like to consider serving as lead attorney, please contact Tom Kerns ( [log in to unmask]). There are a couple of good lawyers lined
up to help, too. It's not onerous, but we do need someone good. Is that you? Or do you know who it might be?
More information about the Tribunal can be found here and here,
background reports on human rights and other materials can be found here (Human
Rights Impact Assessments, etc), and the specific questions on which we are asking the judges to rule can be seen here.
———
The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Session on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change
- Keynote address on the Tribunal’s opening day: Dr Sandra Steingraber
- *Attorney overview of the schedule, the
four questions posed to the judges for an advisory opinion, the six
areas of concern, and some key arguments.
- Overview of witness testimony from two pre-PPT tribunals in Athens and Youngstown, Ohio and the human rights standards at issue.
- Overview of witness testimony presented at the Australian pre-PPT tribunal and the human rights standards at issue.
- Testimony and arguments about the issues as seen in a rights of nature / earth jurisprudence context.
- Overview of climate change and the human rights norms at stake.
- Overview of the climate change impacts on Alaska’s Inuit coastal communities and the human rights norms at stake.
- Description of the human rights impacts of fracking on a small Inuit community on Alaska’s North Slope.
- Overview of the witness testimony and human rights standards at issue in the Charlottesville, Virginia pre-PPT tribunal.
- *A conferencing session between judges and attorneys exploring the conceptual foundations of the relationships between human rights, fracking and climate change.
- Additional personal testimony, submission of several amicus briefs from a range of top quality NGOs and briefs re procedural rights in Australia, fracking issues in Newfoundland/Labrador), etc.
- *Attorney summation of key testimony and arguments and recommendations re the judges’ advisory opinion on the
four primary questions.
Warm regards,
Anna
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