The Tide Is Rising And So Is the Failure of Human Rights Law -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka

We are being taught that the sea, with all its silence and convictions. It redraws coastlines inch by precise little inch; poisons freshwater, and puts homes beyond habitation. It is usually referred to as one of the climate crises. It is not. It is a legal one.

The world has known for decades what rising seas would do. When it comes to the science, uncompromising, on projections, unchanging, on risk, indisputable. But the reply has remained rooted in voluntary promises, diplomatic restraint and legal fragmentation. It is not merely inaction postponed. The deeper failure laid bare is that human rights law, as presently structured, simply cannot prevent the very harms it professes to forbid.

The rights to life, housing, water and self-determination, these are not aspirational. They are binding obligations. However, in coastal cities from the Pacific to South Asia, those rights are already melting away before our eyes by rising seas. Homes are destroyed, livelihoods devastated, and cultures endangered. The law recognizes these harms. It documents them. But it does not stop them.

This is the central contradiction. By design, human rights law is reactive. It comes in when violations have already taken place, and only wields the power to remedy those situations whenever possible. However, rising sea levels are not an event; they are a process. The damage is done by the time a breach becomes legal. The land is gone. The community displaced. The identity fractured.

Meanwhile, responsibility remains elusive. The larger polluters could be identified, with quantified contributions. There is, however, no binding global mechanism for converting emissions into loss and damage liability. No court with universal jurisdiction. Search for: No enforceable obligation on states to protect against foreseeable harm Unlike with the implementation of other international laws that have consequences, climate governance takes place through pledges and targets. Compliance is encouraged, not required.

This is exacerbated by the fact that what harm looks like inside this system, rather than being preventable and unacceptable, becomes manageable.

You cannot overlook that inequality inherent in this reality. The people who are being hit the hardest by climate change right now, however including children and those living in poverty or natural disaster-prone areas have done least to cause it. At the same time, small island states and Indigenous communities and coastal populations are now confronted with existential risks but often have fewest resources to respond. Wealthier states, on the other hand, spend more of their resources guarding themselves and shoring up borders while keeping options open to adjust.

Nothing of this is a well designed automised imbalance. It is a political one.

This truth is obscured by the language of “vulnerability.” It implies a natural fragility, rather than merely being forced to be exposed. The reality is that vulnerability needs are actually manufactured, as well all too often policy choices, funding priorities and legal frameworks raise risks for the specific groups. Sea level rise does not generate inequalities. It reveals it.

As the floodwaters start to rise, so does a more awkward question: what good is a human right if you have no way of enforcing it when it counts?

If a legal system is aware of harm before it happens, but fails to prevent that harm from happening; the worker cannot be neutral. It is not just ineffective, i t actually invites. This enables practices that cause known, irreversible harm to go on. This could result in it becoming not only complicit but an active contributor to the very harms it seeks to correct.

While many of us are familiar with the environmental loss consequences. They hit at the international legal order itself. A system which guarantees general security but only provides selective protection cannot maintain its power. The contradiction between principles and practices erodes trust in climate governance over time, as well as human rights more broadly.

This is the real crisis. Not just that communities may vanish, but they might do so in a system which it recognizes their rights but refuses to protect them.

Its easy solution is not more declarations or tougher rhetoric. It is structural change. Binding obligations. Enforceable accountability. Mechanisms that can turn knowledge into action and responsibility into consequence through the law. If these do not happen, society will continue to manager risk rather than prevent it.

The tide is rising. That much is certain.

But with it, who knows what the law will do, come up or recede into obscurity?

Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya Indonesia