In July 2022, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution recognizing the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as a human right. The UNGA calls upon states, international organizations, businesses, and other stakeholders to “scale up efforts” to ensure a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment for all. It took five decades of advocacy to elevate the right to a human right of universal recognition. The distinguished panel of experts will walk us through the journey and highlight possible lessons for gaining recognition of a universal human right to claim innocence.

The concept of international human rights has greatly evolved over time and has expanded to incorporate new types of rights. Advocates, scholars, and human rights lawyers have gained invaluable experience in the course of promoting new rights and having them recognized as international human rights. In this session, two leading experts on human rights and the controversy surrounding the recognition of new rights will share their insights for the innocence community.

Over the last decade, a growing number of countries have adopted new laws and other mechanisms to address a gap in national criminal legal systems: the absence of meaningful procedures to raise post-conviction claims of factual innocence. These legal and policy reforms have responded to a global surge of exonerations facilitated by the growth of national innocence organizations that increasingly collaborate across borders. These developments have occurred with little direct help from international law. Although many treaties recognize extensive fair trial and appeal rights, no international human rights instrument—in its text, existing interpretation, or implementation—explicitly and fully recognizes the right to assert a claim of factual innocence. This omission is international law’s innocence gap. This panel will present its analysis of the gap and discuss ways to address it.