Human rights: Never too old to pick a fight

Depressingly, one country may soon have an old, toxic volcano for a president, again. Happily, another may soon have an ancient glacier for president because, in Iceland, a move is afoot to get the 700 000-year-old Snæfellsjökull glacier on the ballot paper. It meets the requirements, sort of: it’s over 35, undeniably Icelandic, and it needs the Icelandic equivalent of an ID number, which it obtained through campaign organiser Angela Rawlings, who became the glacier’s proxy by taking Snæfellsjökull as her middle name. But… why?

On a clear day, Snæfellsjökull can be seen from Reykjavik, so half of the country is watching it slowly melt away. The campaign puts climate change centre stage in the June election, right where it should be. If the glacier gets elected, campaigners intend sending a bottle of glacial meltwater whenever the president is called to international duty. I love this. I also love that Ecuador legally enshrined the rights of nature in 2008; that New Zealand’s Māori have won legal personhood for nature, first for a forest, then for a river.

And you’ve got to love old Swiss women too for their unwavering climate activism. The KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz are a collective of 2 500 women – average age 73, all lifelong campaigners – who took their government to court for breaching their basic human rights. Older women are particularly vulnerable to heatwaves, they argued, which have become commonplace in Switzerland. Their country’s climate policy was simply not protecting them, they said, taking their fight through three dismissive Swiss courts – which countered they’d be dead before the 1.50C-degree threshold was breached – and finally to the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg. And there they won: 16 of the 17 judges agreed climate protection is a human right. The women did this for the future generations. Thanks to them, climate change inaction is officially now a breach of human rights.

So much for waving placards, signing petitions, and feelings defeated. Let glaciers and old women be our future inspiration, insisting that government fulfils its legal, moral, and political duties. It’s our basic human right. It’s our basic human responsibility.

NOW READ: South Africa is well positioned to raise human rights issues – experts