Australia told to compensate Torres Strait over failure to act on climate crisis, in landmark UN ruling

 The United Nations ruled in a landmark decision that Australia must pay compensation to the islands of the Torres Strait after violating their human rights by not acting swiftly enough to address the climate issue.


The claimants claimed that rising sea levels had already harmed food sources and ancestral burial sites, dispersing human remains, and had put dwellings at risk of being submerged in the first-ever climate lawsuit filed by residents of low-lying islands against a nation-state.


The Australian government's inability to sufficiently protect the Indigenous islanders from climate breakdown constituted a breach of their rights to family life and culture, the UN's human rights committee found on Friday, three years after the complaint was lodged.

The lawsuit – by eight Australian nationals and six of their children inhabiting the islands of Boigu, Poruma, Warraber and Masig – alleged that former premier Scott Morrison’s government had violated their rights by failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and upgrade seawall protections, among other failures

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