Abstract

The long awaited decisions of the Committee on the Rights of the Child in the case Sacchi et al have not betrayed the expectations of many international lawyers who have been favouring a courageous reading of the notion of jurisdiction in international human rights law. The decisions are also forward- looking as far as the non-exhaustion of the domestic remedies is concerned. Indeed, they do not delegitimise the action of many domestic courts that have been dealing with a surprisingly high number of legal actions against Governments or public authorities for their unsatisfactory mitigation policies. Nonetheless, they are not without limits. On the one hand they do not take the measurement of greenhouse gas emissions from individual States into account in order to calculate the causal link between damages and States’ conduct; on the other hand the decisions are silent on the plaintiffs’ status of victims for the violation of Art. 3 of the Convention, and therefore they do not take any stance on the right of the children that the protection of future generations are taken into account by the decisions of public institutions and authorities. Lastly, the decision against Turkey on the non-exhaustion of domestic remedies in this State is excessively dismissive and formalistic