Business and Human Rights

On 3 July 2025, Justice Nancy Hernandez, President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), announced the issuance of the new Advisory Opinion on the Climate Emergency (AO-32). In front of the crowded room where landmark cases have been litigated, Justice Hernandez summarised the most important aspects of the long-awaited AO-32 during a live-streamed notification event. This blog post examines how the IACtHR addressed the questions it chose to answer and how its rationale either reinforces or advances the understanding of how international human rights obligations intersect with the “climate emergency”, a term the IACtHR deliberately endorses as a matter of urgency, severity and complexity (¶184). To do so, the post is divided into five parts: an introduction, three subsections according to each question the IACtHR answered, and a conclusion.