Inuit File Human Rights Petition Against US On Climate Breakdown

[hatrack]

OSLO - Inuit hunters threatened by a melting of the Arctic ice plan to file a petition accusing Washington of violating their human rights by fuelling global warming, an Inuit leader said on Wednesday.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), also said Washington was hindering work to follow up a 2004 report by 250 scientists that said the thaw could make the Arctic Ocean ice-free in summer by 2100.

Watt-Cloutier, in Oslo to receive an environmental prize, said the Inuits' planned petition to the 34-member Organization of American States (OAS) could put pressure on the United States to do more to cut industrial emissions of heat-trapping gases.

"It's still in the works, the drafting is still going on," she said of a long-planned petition to the OAS' human rights arm, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. She said the Inuit aimed to file it before a UN meeting in Montreal in December."

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