16 | - Número: 004 | 1 de Novembro de 2014

to cross-border movement.
Even in countries such as Libya, Ukraine and Syria, which have witnessed governments negate their responsibility to protect their citizens, the basic use of online social media platforms and mobile phone apps have brought damning evidence of gross human rights violations to the attention of the international community; evidence that may not have otherwise come to light. Although most of these examples come from outside of the OSCE space, they nevertheless relate to the question of how our organisation can respond to disasters with innovative methods, while at the same time improving existing ones. At national level, participating states should seek to create and/or sustain economic incentives for technological innovation – especially in areas such as information technology and telecommunications that can be utilised during and after disasters. This will provide individuals, states and other international actors with the tools required to mitigate their effects. Technology can be an essential mechanism in managing the conflicts that arise from natural disasters, but it is also true that there are factors that can generate greater environmental vulnerability to catastrophes and limit the reach of technology and the benefits which that development may bring. The question is: what about people who do not even have a mobile phone? How can we guarantee technological advances when the majority of the population is poor? Poverty can be an obstacle and cannot be ignored. Their increased difficulty in accessing certain information, and of mobility, the need to occupy areas of risk and greater environmental fragility, and even the overexploitation of natural resources in their environment to ensure survival make the poorest the main victims of disasters. This has been happening in OSCE member states.
Environmental inequalities and the vulnerabilities that they cause can be understood as situations of environmental injustice. Environmental justice movements highlight precisely the need to distribute environmental costs, risks and benefits equally, regardless of factors that cannot be justified rationally, such as race, socioeconomic condition, culture or power.
At the same time, situations of environmental inequality and injustice are also factors that weaken the potential for tackling vulnerabilities, since they affect the basic procedural environmental rights of access to information, participation, technology and even justice. The challenge of protecting the population reflects one of the fundamental duties of both state and interstate actors. But that cohesion should be implemented while also taking into account the environmental vulnerability imposed upon all those who do not have the same response opportunities and the same access to a range of benefits. Environmental displacement, especially between states, is a lacuna in international law, which may receive an important contribution from the OSCE and all its member states. The growing use of environmental standards in the analysis of human rights violations, along with environmental displacements and the legal means that they demand, indicate the trend towards the integration of the environmental law and human rights protection systems, essential to creating legal responses to environmental vulnerability in light of ecological disasters.
That is why this speech focuses on two paradoxical subjects that are to some extent interconnected: on the one hand, the constant need to harmonise a jurisprudence that protects populations displaced because of natural disasters; on the other, guaranteeing that member states search together to find synergies able to implement consolidated investment in innovative technologies that can be tools for combating and protecting in the event of catastrophe and that can be used by all.
Without that harmony, we may be developing technology that is aimed at only a few, condemning to misfortune all those who are not involved. The OSCE is a global stage that brings together several highly diverse cultures and countries and it is the responsibility of all of us to think of this space as a whole that does not leave anyone behind.”

A terceira sessão da Conferência teve como tema a Dimensão Humana da OSCE e contou com a presença de Peter Maurer (Presidente do Comité Internacional da Cruz Vermelha), Gianni Magazzeni (Gabinete do Alto Comissário das Nações Unidas para os Direitos Humanos), Guy Rhodes (Diretor do Centro Internacional para a Desminagem Humanitária) e Margareta Wahlstrom (Representante Especial do Secretário-Geral da ONU para a Redução de Riscos de Desastres). O Senhor Maurer apelou aos parlamentares para ligarem os desafios internacionais da área humanitária às suas legislações nacionais.
O Senhor Magazzeni afirmou que era essencial a criação de “Planos de Ação” nacionais na área da defesa dos Direitos Humanos, sendo o papel dos Parlamentos fundamental nesta área.