How a Group of Elderly Swiss Women Won a Historic Human-Rights Verdict
Confronted by data on the plaintiffs’ vulnerability to climate impacts, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Switzerland “failed to comply with its duties.”
Members of KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz (Senior Women for Climate Protection Switzerland) outside the European Court of Human Rights before the judgement in their case in Strasbourg, on April 9.
Photographer: Roland Wittek/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
The seeds of this week’s historic victory by an association of elderly women at the European Court of Human Rights were sown in the baking heat of summer 2003.
That year, a heat wave killed more than 70,000 people across Europe, with a disproportionate number of deaths occurring among elderly women. Zurich-based lawyer Cordelia Baehr, now 43, was attending law school at the time, but in 2016 she had an “aha” moment informed in part by that heat wave’s impacts: Research has shown that elderly women are particularly vulnerable to extreme heat, and that extreme heat is exacerbated by climate change.