Every year on April 7th, the global community pauses to reflect on the state of our collective well-being, assessing the triumphs and systemic failures of global health governance. This year, the World Health Organization (WHO) has united the world under a powerful, urgent theme: “Together for health. Stand with science.” This year’s campaign demands multilateral cooperation and the “One Health” approach, recognizing that human, animal, and ecosystem health are inseparable. It urges policymakers and scholars to translate scientific evidence into policy. And today, the most profound scientific reality we face is that climate change is a severe, escalating, and legally actionable public health crisis.

Standing with science requires addressing the legal and structural gaps exposing millions to climate-related health risks. We must adopt a Human Rights-Based Approach to fully implement the right to health, anchored on the interdependent right to a healthy, sustainable environment and fully informed by science.

The Scientific Basis for Urgent Action

The scientific consensus is unequivocal and forms the foundational bedrock of the call to legal action. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has established with high confidence that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have driven approximately 1.1°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels. Climate change is not merely an abstract environmental shift but a direct assault on human well-being, causing increased mortality, food insecurity, and the spread of vector-borne diseases. The WHO projects 250,000 additional annual deaths from malnutrition, malaria, and heat stress between 2030 and 2050. APHRC research further shows that heat exposure leads to increase in morbidity and mortality associated with cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes mellitus in Low-and Middle-income countries. In response to this irrefutable evidence, the 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024, recognized climate change as an “imminent threat to global health,” demanding integrated action. Jurisprudentially, the law must adapt to this scientific reality by using legal and human rights tools to protect citizens.

Why a Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA) to Climate Health?

The human rights-based approach (HRBA) to health provides the normative architecture for addressing climate-related health threats. At its core, the HRBA imposes four fundamental obligations on States: to respect (refrain from interfering with health rights), protect (prevent third parties from violating health rights), promote (foster a culture of awareness and create an environment where health rights can be recognized)  and realized fulfill (take positive measures to realize health rights), and ensure non-discrimination. These obligations are legally binding under international law.

HRBA recognizes that climate change is not a victimless phenomenon, but rather a direct threat to fundamental human rights, including the rights to life, health, food, water, housing, and self-determination. The HRBA is deeply anchored in foundational international human rights instruments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

The right to health is enshrined in Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which recognizes “the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.” General Comment No. 14 clarifies that this right extends far beyond access to healthcare—it encompasses the underlying determinants of health, including safe drinking water, adequate sanitation, safe food, nutrition, housing, healthy occupational and environmental conditions, and access to health-related education.

To operationalize the right to health, General Comment No. 14 introduces the AAAQ framework: health facilities, goods, and services must be Available in sufficient quantity, Accessible to all without discrimination, Acceptable (respectful of medical ethics and culturally appropriate), and of good Quality (scientifically and medically appropriate). This framework provides a practical lens for assessing whether States are meeting their obligations—particularly as climate change disrupts health systems and exacerbates inequalities.

 The Right to a Clean, Healthy, and Sustainable Environment as Fundamental Prerequisite to the Right to Health  

Historically, human rights law and environmental law operated in strictly separate silos. However, the emerging recognition of the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment—recently affirmed by the UN Human Rights Council via Resolution 48/13, recognizing the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as a human right On 8 October 2021 and followed on 28 July 2022 by UN General Assembly Resolution 76/300, which affirmed this right at the global level.

These resolutions represent a paradigm shift, acknowledging that environmental degradation and climate change directly threaten rights to life, health, food, water, housing, and culture. The right to a healthy environment is a fundamental prerequisite for the right to health. This synergy provides legal leverage by framing climate action as a human rights obligation rather than a discretionary policy, establishing it as a mandatory legal duty for States.

Centering Differentiated Vulnerabilities Through the Climate Justice Lenses

True human rights commitment necessitates viewing the climate crisis through climate justice. This framework reframes global warming from a purely environmental or economic issue into a fundamental matter of justice involving responsibility, distribution, recognition, and procedure. Climate change reveals deep structural inequities, disproportionately impacting those least responsible for emissions, including children, women, the elderly, persons with disabilities, Indigenous groups, and the Global South. These populations endure the most severe physiological consequences despite their minimal historical contribution to the atmospheric crisis.

To understand this dynamic, we must look at the rigorous empirical work being done across the continent. For example, through initiatives like the CHARTer Project in West Africa, APHRC researchers are investigating how environmental heat—including high temperatures, erratic rain, and droughts—impacts maternal and child mortality in Senegal and The Gambia. This work demonstrates that climate change is a present reality currently compromising maternal and perinatal health.

A comprehensive climate justice framework requires adhering to several core principles:

• Distributive Justice: Fairly sharing climate burdens and protecting vulnerable groups, like heat-exposed pregnant women.
• Corrective Justice: Holding major polluters legally accountable for health harms.
• Procedural Justice: Ensuring marginalized communities have a meaningful voice in climate policy design.
• Intergenerational Justice: Fulfilling our obligation to protect the planet for future generations, addressing current legal gaps for children and the unborn.

Across the African continent, regional legal frameworks like the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) provide essential, progressive normative foundations for addressing these impacts. The African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child has explicitly stressed the absolute necessity for rights-based climate action. Yet, substantial gaps in domestic implementation and limited enforcement mechanisms continue to derail the effectiveness of these regional treaties.

The Global Governance Disconnect: Where Law Fails Science

Despite the robust scientific consensus, there is a fundamental disconnect between international climate law and global health law. The existing international legal frameworks operate in rigid silos, resulting in massive gaps in protecting human health from climate-related harms. The primary international climate treaties—the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement—emphasize carbon mitigation, technology transfer, and environmental adaptation. However, they categorically fail to integrate health adequately or set explicitly defined, binding health obligations for states. While the preamble of the Paris Agreement recognizes human rights obligations, it does so with no binding, operational force, leaving enforcement entirely to the political whim of individual nations.

Conversely, foundational health instruments like the WHO Constitution and the International Health Regulations (IHR) historically do not treat climate change as an explicitly regulated, legally actionable health threat. This fragmented global governance means that while human rights law grants the right to health, utilizing it as an effective tool for climate accountability is severely limited by a lack of cohesive international enforcement mechanisms.

Conclusion

As we observe World Health Day 2026, the CALL to “Stand with science” is not merely a slogan; it is a legally binding call to align our global, regional, and domestic legal systems with scientific truth. We can no longer afford to treat climate change law and human health law as separate, isolated policy and legal domains. Human health is inextricably linked to the stability of our environment.

It is time for targeted legal reforms, robust institutional strengthening, and an unwavering, global commitment to climate justice. We must move beyond fragmented, toothless treaties and fully operationalize the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. Let us advocate for laws, policies, and judiciaries that not only acknowledge the grim science of climate change but actively wield that science to fiercely protect the right to health for current and future generations.

Climate change is a human rights crisis. The right to health is a legal obligation. Together, we must stand with science—and with justice.