Yesterday the Fair Start Movement filed an update to its original “Fair Start” filing before the United Nations Human Rights Council. We updated our complaint because of the acceleration of the climate crisis, and the failure of governments around the world to respond to the crisis.

The complaint and update make a few simple demands:

• First, the United Nations must treat the correct interpretation of universal family policies (which should require climate restoration through birth equity redistribution of wealth in the form of family planning entitlements) as the fundamental and overriding human right.
• Second, to admit that the United Nations failure to do this previously led to the climate and inequity crises we face today, including violations of future generations’ right to have children in safe and natural environments, and for that right to be safeguarded in perpetuity.
• Third, to endorse loss and damage payments as overriding property rights, if used for the family planning entitlements described above.

The original UN Human Rights Council petition can be found here, and our updated filing can be found here.

Put simply: There is a universal human right that overrides domestic climate policies – most of which are anthropocentric and insufficient – in part because climate emissions do not respect borders and the “business as usual” approaches most governments and groups use disproportionately harm the peoples and nations least responsible for the crisis.

As the update argues:

One clear step towards compliance with the best interpretation of Article 16 (the right to found a family) would be to urge that programming around the education of young women – throughout the world – begin with ensuring they know that all children’s right to an ecosocial Fair Start in life (defined by concrete climate restoration and birth equity measures) – now and for generations to come – overrides all competing rights and interests as the first and peremptory human right, including any conflicting property rights.

That right should be the standard or baseline for, and the priority use of, evolving loss and damage payments.

Take Action: Urge the UN Secretary General to support our claim.