Justice access: the myth of environmental protection by international human rights courts

Abstract

The healthy environment is an inherent human right, a guarantee of life on Earth, whose protection is unrestricted. This paper proposes to understand access to justice as a mechanism for safeguarding Human Law to the environment, transcending the limits of national jurisdiction and the search for transnational organizations in the realization of fundamental rights and guarantees. For this purpose, the methodology consists of a theoretical legal study with deductive reasoning, analyzing the effectiveness of international court judgments in matters involving environmental issues, examining the procedures adopted by the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, the Protocol of San Salvador, and the International Court of Justice. Bibliographic and documentary research is also carried out, in which it is intended to attest that even in the face of the limitation of the matter by international organizations using the oblique or reflex route, it is possible to analyze environmental issues by the International Courts. The theoretical framework used as a basis to guide the research is the work of Mauro Cappelletti and Bryant Garth, Access to Justice. The conclusions reached show that in many cases the execution of sentences takes place in a partial and time-consuming manner.