CCPR/C/127/D/2728/2016 Annex I Individual opinion of Committee member Duncan Laki Muhumuza (dissenting) 1. Upon carefully examining the facts of the present communication, I am of the considered view that the author presents a case that reveals a violation and consequently, it should be admissible. The facts before the Committee re-emphasize the need to employ a human-sensitive approach to human rights issues. Accordingly, I disagree with the position reached by the rest of the Committee. The State party placed an unreasonable burden of proof on the author to establish the real risk and danger of arbitrary deprivation of life, within the scope of article 6 of the Covenant. The conditions of life laid out by the author, resulting from climate change in Kiribati, are significantly grave and pose a real, personal and reasonably foreseeable risk of a threat to his life under article 6 (1). Moreover, the Committee needs to handle critical and significantly irreversible issues of climate change with an approach that seeks to uphold the sanctity of human life. 2. The author presents evidence, which is not disputed by either the State party or the rest of the Committee, that sea level rise in Kiribati has resulted in the scarcity of habitable space, causing life endangering violent land disputes, and in severe environmental degradation resulting in contamination of the water supply and the destruction of food crops, yet the author’s family relied largely on subsistence agriculture and fishing. Since their removal to Kiribati, the author and his family have been unable to grow crops. Furthermore, the land in Tarawa (the location of the author’s and his family’s home) has reportedly been prone to significant flooding, with land being submerged up to knee-deep after king tides. Moreover, beyond reports of children getting diarrhoea and dying because of the poor quality of drinking water, the author and his family, on their return to Kiribati, have suffered from significant health issues, with one of his children contracting a serious case of blood poisoning, causing boils all over the body. 3. Whereas the risk to a person expelled or otherwise removed, must be personal – not deriving from general conditions, except in extreme cases – the threshold should not be too high or unreasonable. Even as the jurisprudence of the Committee emphasizes a high threshold for providing substantial grounds to establish that a real risk of irreparable harm exists, it has been critical to consider all relevant facts and circumstances, including the general human rights situation in the author’s country of origin.1 As a necessary corollary to the high threshold, the Committee has been careful to counterbalance a potentially unreachable standard with the need to consider all relevant facts and circumstances, which comprise, among other elements, the grave situation in the author’s country. 4. It is the Committee’s position that the right to life includes the entitlement of individuals to enjoy a life with dignity, and to be free from acts or omissions that are intended or may be expected to cause their unnatural or premature death. 2 It is also the Committee’s position that environmental degradation and climate change constitute extremely serious threats to the ability of both present and future generations to enjoy the right to life. In recognition of that reality, States have been obligated to preserve the environment and protect it against harm, pollution and climate change. 3 5. In my view, the author faces a real, personal and reasonably foreseeable risk of a threat to his right to life as a result of the conditions in Kiribati. The considerable difficulty in accessing fresh water because of the environmental conditions should be enough to reach the threshold of risk, without needing to reach the point at which there is a complete lack of fresh water. There is evidence of the significant difficulty of growing crops. Moreover, even if deaths are not occurring with regularity on account of the conditions (as articulated by the Immigration and Protection Tribunal), it should not mean that the threshold has not 1 2 3 B.D.K. et al. v. Canada (CCPR/C/125/D/3041/2017), para. 7.3; and K v. Denmark (CCPR/C/114/D/2393/2014), para. 7.3. Human Rights Committee, general comment No. 36 (2018) on the right to life, para. 3. Ibid., para. 62. 13