MONTREAL (AFP) - The people of the Arctic filed a landmark human rights complaint against the United States, blaming the world's No. 1 carbon polluter for stoking the global warming that is destroying their habitat.
The Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), representing native people in the vast, sparsely-populated region girdling the Earth's far north, said they had petitioned an inter-American panel to seek relief for Canadian and US Inuit.
Global warming has caused the northern ice cover to retreat, making it more dangerous for the Inuit to hunt food animals such as polar bears, seals and caribou, their investigation found. And, rising sea levels and flooding threaten coastal Inuit communities.
The petition urges the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to declare the United States to be in violation of the 1948 American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. It also wants the Commission to recommend that the United States adopt mandatory limits of its greenhouse-gas emission and join international efforts to curb global warming.
