Amicus Brief – Human Rights and Climate Change 3. Civil and political and economic, social and cultural rights 34. The petitioners have asked the Commission to consider violations of both civil and political rights, as well as social, economic and cultural rights, associated with the impacts of climate change. Several respondents, however, suggested that the latter request falls outside the scope of the Commission’s jurisdiction, which only extends to violations of civil and political rights.94 As noted in Section A above, the Commission has jurisdiction to consider all human rights violations associated with climate change impacts: its jurisdiction encompasses not only civil and political, but also economic, social, and cultural rights. This section considers the interrelationship of civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights and examines further why the Commission has the jurisdiction to consider all human rights violations associated with the impacts of climate change. 35. The UDHR recognizes both civil and political and economic, cultural and social rights, affirming interrelatedness, interdependence, and indivisibility as the principles which underpin the human rights regime.95 Indeed, the delegates of the Philippines played an essential role in the inclusion of economic, social and cultural rights in the text of the UDHR.96 36. Ideological differences dominating the Cold War period and (mis)conceptions relating to the legal nature, enforceability, and justiciability of economic, social and cultural rights, on the one hand, and civil and political rights, on the other,97 led to the adoption of two separate international treaties in 1966: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).98 During the following decades, this separation of human rights in two categories has been challenged at conceptual, normative and institutional levels. This is evident in the text of more recent human rights treaties, namely the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.99 All these treaties include economic, social and cultural rights alongside civil and political rights, reflecting the reality that eliminating discrimination and effectively ensuring the rights of women, children and persons with disabilities, for example, requires a holistic approach to human rights. 37. In the past three decades an intense process of normative clarification has brought about the re-alignment of economic, social and cultural rights and civil and political rights. UN treaty bodies, regional human rights courts and domestic courts, UN special procedures, non-governmental organizations, and scholars have addressed uncertainties and misconceptions relating to the normative content of both economic, social and cultural and civil and political rights and the obligations attaching to them.100 At the same time, economic, social and cultural rights have been increasingly adjudicated – directly, as well as indirectly through civil and political rights – in domestic and regional courts101, and, since the entry into force in 2013 of the Optional Protocol to the ICESCR, also at international level.102 38. Significantly, it is widely accepted that economic, social and cultural rights, while subject to progressive realization to the maximum of a state’s available resources, entail a core content that must be immediately realized.103 Conversely, only a small number of civil and political rights are absolute; most are qualified rights that can be legitimately limited and balanced against other considerations.104 Furthermore, the practice of implementation has revealed how both the tripartite obligation ‘to respect, protect and fulfil’ and the negative/positive typology of obligations apply equally to civil and political and economic, social and cultural rights.105 For example, the obligation to respect economic, social and cultural rights requires states to refrain from impeding individuals’ existing access to these rights – thus essentially a negative obligation.106 Another illustration is provided by the right to life: long considered to be the paradigmatic negative right, the right to life is in fact premised on a complex web of positive obligations of a substantive and procedural nature.107 13