The Inter-American Court of Human Rights on Monday continued hearings in Brazil for a requested advisory opinion on countries’ obligations related to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.

After Chile and Colombia sought an advisory opinion from the IACtHR, hearings began in Barbados last month and kicked off in Brazil last week, as climate and humanitarian experts sounded the alarm about recent extreme flooding in the South American nation that killed at least 169 people and displaced hundreds of thousands.

The people of El Bosque, the first Mexican community to be officially recognized by authorities as climate-displaced, are among the groups demanding climate justice before the court, with support from Greenpeace Mexico, Nuestro Futuro Mexico, and Conexiones Climáticas.

“Countless claims by communities around the world who have suffered too long from harms imposed on them by colonialist, extractivist business practices, are a testimony to how the fossil fuel and agribusiness industries are impairing the full exercise of all of our human rights and also how the states are failing to guarantee these basic but fundamental rights,” said Greenpeace Mexico climate campaigner Pablo Ramirez in a statement Monday.

According to Greenpeace, “In written observations filed before the IACtHR… the El Bosque community asks the court to establish that states have an obligation to develop climate adaptation policies which effectively address internal displacement due to climate impacts.”

In a crucial year for the climate, the @IACourtHR is meeting in Brazil this week to hear from Indigenous leaders and civil society........

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