Background

 

The “just transition” aims to shift away from intensive production and use of fossil fuel energy towards a low-carbon, sustainable economy while ensuring fairness and equity for all affected parties. Indeed, since 2015 various States and business enterprises, including many from the extractive sector, have announced their commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to combat climate change in alignment with the Paris Agreement, turning to renewable energies and non-fossil fuels, including transition minerals. However, ensuring a “just transition” requires the adoption of measures that respect and ensure human rights. Thus, achieving this implies not only being environmentally sustainable (a question that is deeply enshrined in the ESG debates and practice), but also inclusive and just; in a sense, it is about the social dimension of sustainability, founded on environmental justice, gender equality and human rights. As expressed by the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights in its 2024 report, there is a need to firmly embed the contents of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights across environmental, social and governance criteria.

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In this context, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights play a pivotal role, as they specify the scope of State obligations and corporate responsibilities in the field of human rights, highlighting what each one of them must to do ensure that the transition to a greener economy prevents adverse impacts on human rights and the environment, and creates opportunities that benefit all stakeholders. This includes children, who as a particularly vulnerable group, must have their rights protected and promoted during this transition. This session aims to provide a space to facilitate understanding of the different nuances and challenges related to the “just transition”, and to identify risks and opportunities that can lead to actions focused on preventing impacts and seizing opportunities to ensure and promote children’s rights.​

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Objectives

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The objective of this session is to unfold the manner in which the protect, respect and remedy pillars of the UNGPs can be leveraged in the context of the just transition to ensure children’s rights. In this sense, it aims to identify the risks and opportunities faced by children in the context of the “just transition”, and to highlight the actions that States and businesses need to take to comply with their respective duties and responsibilities under international human rights law.

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Format

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The format proposed for this session is a moderated dialogue, where after a seven-minute presentation by a keynote speaker (who will then join the panel), a moderator engages in a Q&A session with the different panelists and the audience to address different angles of the topic. Ideally, after the keynote speaker’s address, there should be one round of questions for all the panelists, with each intervention lasting no longer than five minutes, followed by an open floor with the audience to present short comments or questions. The moderator would give the floor back to the panelist for short reactions, prior to concluding the session.