UN chief slams ‘climate-wrecking’ firms at human rights body

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday underlined the importance of legal challenges against “climate-wrecking corporations” like fossil-fuel producers, ratcheting up his call for the fight against climate change—- this time before the U.N.’s top human rights body.

Guterres expressed the view that the latest session of the Human Rights Council, part of an address that decried summary executions, torture and sexual violence in places like Ukraine; antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and the persecution of Christians; inequality and threats to free expression, among other issues.

Guterres also sought to undergird the concept of human rights — which have faced “public disregard and private disdain — and tie them together with environmental concerns. “Human rights are not a luxury that can be left until we find a solution to the world’s other problems. They are THE solution to many of the world’s other problems,” he pointed out. “From the climate emergency to the misuse of technology, the answers to today’s crises are found in human rights.”