Chloé Maurel With the creation of the International Labour Organization (ILO), and then the United Nations, “social security became a fundamental human right and was codified as such in international treaties” such as the 1966 UN Covenant on Economic and Social Rights, as recalled by CETIM (Centre Europe-Tiers Monde, or the European Centre for the Third World), a research centre focusing on the roots of maldevelopment in the Global South. Yet, as CETIM observes, “80 per cent of the world’s population is totally or partially excluded from social security. Worse still, the implementation of neoliberal policies around the world over the last three decades has led to the dismantling, or at least the weakening, of social security in countries where it had been successfully institutionalised and universalised after the Second World War.” ...

Chloé Maurel International governance in the “protection of living beings” is at the heart of discussions. In July 2021, the UN Secretary-General, Portuguese national António Guterres, expressed a strong position, considering it “highly desirable” to create the crime of “ecocide” by including it in the list of crimes tried by the International Criminal Court. Some countries have already innovated by recognizing rights for nature, for example for rivers. This is the case in India and New Zealand, which, since 2017, have recognized legal personality for rivers such as the Ganges and Yamuna (India), and the Whanganui River (New Zealand), in order to guarantee their rights to be preserved in their integrity. ...