Ľudské právo na životné prostredie a mechanizmy jeho ochrany v medzinárodnom práve
Authors: Jankuv Juraj 
Published: February 2025

The author deals in his contribution with the topic of the human right to the environment and the mechanisms of its protection in international law. Human right to the environment was implemented to the international law at the beginning of the seventies of the twentieth century in the scope of international environmental law. The legal arrangement of this human right was later logically connected with the international human rights law. That is why the international mechanisms of protection of this right are contained in two mentioned parts of international public law – international environmental law and international human rights law. The concept of the human right to the environment is included in the so called “third generation of human rights” under the scientific and special literature. Coming up from the analysis of the relevant international documents the author comes to the conclusion that the human right to the environment is anchored in international law in material form and also in the form of procedural rights, which the author calls procedural environmental rights. Procedural environmental rights include the right to access to information about environment, the right to public participation in decision making in environmental matters and the right to access to justice in environmental matters. The material dimension of the human right to the environment is characterised by the low level of international protection and enforcement. This right, firstly mentioned by the Principle 1 of the non-binding Stockholm Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, is at the moment anchored directly and in a most profound manner in the United Nations European Economic Commission Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus, 1998). The other international instruments are not that precise in formulating this right or not in force. However, the Aarhus convention prefers to protect the material human right to environment by above mentioned procedural environmental rights. The material right to the environment could not be directly invoked and protected by this treaty. All of the mentioned facts show that the material right to the environment is not anchored in the international law in a reasonable manner. That is why it is not possible to state that the principle of the human right to the environment is a generally binding principle of international law at the moment. The ways how to protect the material human right to the environment are because of mentioned reasons limited to the protection through the other human rights like the right to life or the right to respect for private and family life. There are many examples of using this way of protection by individuals in the jurisprudence of the Human Rights Committee in Geneva, created by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) and mainly in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, created by the European Convention on Human Rights and Basic Freedoms (1950). The procedural environmental rights are anchored in more non-binding and even binding international documents then the material right to the environment. The leading document in this sense is the above mentioned Aarhus convention. The controlling mechanisms of the Aarhus convention developed by the contracting parties include the right of the public and of contracting states to put communication or claim against the contracting state as for the breach of the provision of the Aarhus convention. The communications and claims are addressed to the international body – the Compliance Committee – created by the contracting parties at their regular session in October 2002. The Compliance Committee successfully started its activity and stated breach of the Aarhus convention in five cases. On the other hand, there is also the opportunity to protect the environmental rights on international level indirectly through the procedural rights like the right to fair trial, right to an effective remedy, or right to information included in the scope of the freedom of speech. This approach is shown mainly in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg created by the European Convention on Human Rights and Basic Freedoms (1950). The Aarhus convention influenced the human dimension of activities of the Council of Europe. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recommended to create and additional protocol to the European convention (1950) as for the procedural environmental rights. The European Union acquis communautaire in the mentioned area is coming up from the Aarhus convention approach. The secondary rules of the European law contain a group of directives approved in order to implement the Aarhus convention or even older directives are directly anchoring environmental procedural rights without mentioning the Aarhus convention. There are first cases concerning the procedural environmental rights solved by the European Court of Justice in Luxemburg.