In December 2024, ombudspersons from Central Eastern Europe gathered at a conference in Budapest and adopted the Budapest Declaration on the Role of Ombuds Institutions in Protecting the Needs of Future Generations, which represents a significant milestone in concretizing what national human rights institutions can do to protect future generations. The Declaration builds upon a rich foundation of international legal developments concerning future generations while offering practical guidance on how ombuds institutions can effectively advocate for long-term environmental interests in their jurisdictions.

The Declaration was initiated by the Ombudsman for Future Generations of Hungary, which was established in 2008 and became the first national institution in the world with a unique constitutional mandate to protect future generations. The Ombudsman may investigate the actions or omission of governmental authorities, and issue recommendations on how to better comply with constitutional human rights standards in their decision-making. Further powers include the right to comment on legislative bills to ensure that they do not pose a severe or irreversible threat to the environment; to challenge the constitutionality of an act before the Constitutional Court if they undermine the interests of future generations or may violate the right to a healthy environment, and to raise awareness among all stakeholders including the general public of issues that may jeopardize the interests of future generations.

The Hungarian ombudsperson has a handful of similar counterparts around the world, including the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales and the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development in Canada.Existing and prospective institutions and individual leaders working towards future generations on the domestic (or regional) levels has established the Network of Institutions and Leaders for Future Generations in 2014 also in Budapest.

The majority of ombuds institutions, however, typically does not have such explicit powers to advocate for the interests of future generations. Some may not even have a standalone right to a healthy environment recognized in their jurisdiction and have a mandate only to scrutinize the respect for general human rights standards. The statutory mandates, powers, and resources of human rights watchdog institutions also vary widely across states. Nevertheless, the Budapest Declaration stresses that all types of ombuds institution are capable of advocating for protecting future generations under various human rights provisions in certain ways best fit the specificities of the respective domestic legal system.

Ombuds institutions could find effective ways for safeguarding future generations under a range of human rights provisions available to them. They are uniquely positioned as public institutions, typically endowed with statutory powers, specified mandates, and visibility to voice environmental human rights concerns towards the public and competent institutions and stakeholders when needed. Thus, they are well-placed to act as the ‘green consciousness’ of societies or as a future-oriented institution that fosters an effective protection of the people and the planet on the long-term amidst the climate and ecological crises. The legislative and executive branches of the State typically pursue shorter-term priorities while seeking re-election; however, ombuds institutions are not subject to such pressures (or at least not to the same extent), hence their powers can be better utilized to speak for the future and the longer-term perspective.

Against this background, the Declaration aims to mainstream the idea that ombuds institutions are uniquely positioned to advocate for protecting the long-term interests of future generations, including their basic needs of a safe and stable climate and thriving ecosystems. The Declaration also provides concrete guidance on how they can fulfil this crucial role effectively. As environmental challenges and intergenerational concerns continue to grow, the Declaration serves as a timely reminder of the institutional mechanisms available to protect the interests of those who cannot yet speak for themselves.

1. Future generations in international law: recent developments

The Declaration is rooted in the principle of intergenerational equity, which has a long history in international law. As early as in 1972, Principle 2 of the UN Stockholm Declaration specifically mentioned the principle of intergenerational equity among the key principles of international environmental law. Later the idea that the present generation owes certain obligations towards later generations has been embedded in the concept of sustainable development, which is defined in the 1992 Rio Declaration as a “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

There appears to be a recent revival in the normative and policy uptake of the principle of inter-generational equity. In 2013, the UN Secretary General issued a report on intergenerational solidarity and the needs of future generations. More recently, the UN held a Summit for the Future in September 2024, resulting in the outcome document adopted by the UN General Assembly on ‘Declaration on Future Generations’.

In 2023, the UN Committee of the Rights of the Child also noted intergenerational equity as a guiding principle in its General Commentary No. 26, interpreting the 1960 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.  In the same year, an expert panel issued the Maastricht Principles on the Human Rights of Future Generations, which is a non-binding yet highly influential document stressing that human rights guarantees should extend to future individuals. Indeed, several sources of international law and domestic laws do confer certain rights on future generations and/or stipulate correlative legal obligations for the present generations to take due care and regard for the future. The approx. 300-pages commentary released this February illustrates well the depth of the normative foundations of protecting future generations through human rights law.

As far as judicial enforcement is concerned, however, the principle of intergenerational equity has only received a cursory attention from international courts for decades. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) did not rely on the principle in its contentious cases, and only certain dissenting members of the bench devoted attention to the protection of future generations with a normative force. The ICJ now will have the opportunity to revisit its dismissive approach to future generations in the pending advisory proceedings on states’ climate change related obligations. Both of the underlying questions submitted by the General Assembly in its request for the advisory opinion, feature future generations at their core. Moreover, an increasing number of national courts around the world has already started to devote normative attention to future generations in their reasoning, a trend that has been called ‘future generations litigation’ in the literature (see e.g. the articles featured in the latest issue of the TEL journal dedicated to Transnational Environmental Law and the Future). 

This seems to have changed, however, with the landmark judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland case delivered by the Grand Chamber in April 2024. As argued by one of us in another post, the ECtHR placed future generations at the core of its assessment. Tellingly, the inter-generational burden-sharing principle has been mentioned in the first paragraph in the Court’s assessment setting out the principled basis of its reasoning. The judgment also mandates a detailed list of positive obligations for States under Article 8 (right to private life) of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (§550). This includes the duty to design greenhouse gas reduction targets and pathways on the basis of best available science, incorporate them in a binding domestic legal framework that needs to be adequately implemented, and the targets have to be updated with due diligence.

Finally, there have also been influential developments recently on the institutional level. For instance, the UN Secretary General decided to appoint a Special Envoy for Future Generations in October 2024. Moreover, on the EU level, the EU Commission, for the first time ever, now includes a commissioner who is specifically tasked with fostering inter-generational fairness. As part of the Future Generations Initiative, a coalition of NGOs is campaigning to push for an ambitious agenda for the protection of future generations in the EU as part of this portfolio.

2. Ombuds Institutions as Unique Spokespersons for the Voiceless

The starting point of the Budapest Declaration lies in recognizing that future generations need spokespersons at all levels to abate their lack of representation in legislative and policy-making decisions. Ombuds institutions can use their existing mandates to give voice to the voiceless in particular to future generations, nature, children and youth alongside other vulnerable groups in society.

The Declaration’s first key contribution is explaining why ombuds institutions are particularly well-positioned to advocate for long-term interests. As public institutions endowed with statutory powers and specific mandates, they possess both the authority and visibility to effectively voice concerns to decision-makers and the public. Their unique position allows them to bridge the gap between current governance structures and the needs of future generations, who lack direct representation in today’s decision-making processes.

The Declaration provides guidance on how ombuds institutions can fulfil this role effectively. It acknowledges the diversity of national legal frameworks and institutional powers, ranging from investigating complaints to initiating legislative proposals or intervening in court proceedings. Despite these variations, the Declaration emphasizes that all ombuds institutions can find ways to inject long-term thinking into policy-making processes. Indeed, there is no one-size-fits all solutions, but some forms of advocacy are in all likelihood possible with a view to the flexible mandates of such institutions.

A crucial approach highlighted in the Declaration is the importance of grounding advocacy in objective scientific evidence. It encourages ombuds institutions to collaborate with scientific experts and competent scientific institutions to strengthen their advocacy with state-of-the-art scientific insights. The Declaration also emphasizes their role in promoting environmental information access, public participation, and transparency in decision-making processes. The Aarhus Convention is for instance a key human rights treaty with regard to environmental democracy, and ombudspersons can typically foster its implementation on the domestic level.

3. Key areas: fostering resilience and promoting human rights-compliant climate action

The Declaration recognizes ombuds institutions’ vital role in enhancing societal resilience during crises. This includes helping legal and governmental systems adapt to systemic challenges such as climate change impacts, pandemics, or natural disasters. By enabling bottom-up processes, these institutions ensure that vulnerable communities’ rights and needs are adequately considered in emergency response measures.

A significant portion of the Declaration focuses on ombuds institutions’ role in promoting human rights-compliant climate action. Drawing on the KlimaSeniorinnen judgment, it emphasizes that protection against adverse climate impacts is a human right under the European Convention on Human Rights. The KlimaSeniorinnen judgment stresses that “competent domestic authorities of Contracting Parties, be it at the legislative, executive or judicial level” (para. 550) have to pay due regard to protect and realize the right of the individuals to effective protection against adverse climate impacts. This language arguably includes ombuds institutions as well. Therefore, as organs of the state, ombuds institutions themselves also have such an obligation. This means that they should also promote discharging the positive obligations in the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation on part of other competent domestic authorities.

Furthermore, after KlimaSeniorinnen State authorities also have an obligation to provide access to relevant climate information and provide opportunities for affected individuals to voice their concerns about domestic climate measures. Ombuds institutions have particularly important role in ensuring compliance with such procedural safeguards.

The Budapest Declaration also mentions some concrete examples of how human rights institutions can engage with climate change issues to promote ambitious domestic climate action. Ombudspersons are recently becoming actively involved in climate change advocacy. Notably, the European Network of National Human Rights Institutions (ENNHRI) was the only third-party intervener, which was allowed to intervene orally before the Grand Chamber in the KlimaSeniorinnen case.  Forms of their engagement may range from issuing recommendations on the human rights aspects and requirements in designing greenhouse gas reduction measures (as recently did by the Norwegian national human rights institution), to intervening in climate related court proceedings also via submitting amicus curiae briefs (as did the Hungarian Ombudsman in a pending climate litigation case before the Constitutional Court). The Swiss National Human Rights Institution is participating in the Rule 9 procedure before the Council of Europe concerning the adequacy of the domestic execution of the KlimaSeniorinnen judgment.

Finally, the Declaration calls for proactive engagement of ombuds institutions in protecting future generations’ environmental interests. It encourages them to use their mandate creatively to advocate for long-term environmental protection, facilitate dialogue among various stakeholders, and ensure that environmental concerns are properly considered in policy decisions. The Declaration, which is currently signed by the Czech, the Slovakian, the Serbian and the Hungarian ombuds institution, concludes with an invitation to other ombuds institutions to join this commitment, representing a significant step toward institutionalizing the protection of future generations’ interests in governance systems worldwide.

By providing both theoretical foundations and practical guidance, the Budapest Declaration offers a comprehensive framework for ombuds institutions to effectively serve as guardians of future generations’ interests.

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Posted by Katalin Sulyok and Gyula Bándi

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Katalin Sulyok is Chief Legal Advisor to the Ombudsman for Future Generations, Chair of Climate Change Working Group of ENNHRI (European Network of National Human Rights Institutions) . Her email address is katalinsulyok@alumni.harvard.edu

Gyula Bándi is Ombudsman for Future Generations of Hungary. His email address is gyula.bandi@ajbh.hu