Sea-Level Rise, Human Rights, and State Responsibility: Advisory Opinions in an Interdependent International Legal Order

Sea-level rise has its gravest effects in low-lying States and coastal communities. Yet the legal obligations engaged by those effects remain dispersed across the law of the sea, climate treaty law, international human rights law, and the general law of State responsibility. This article examines what the advisory opinions of ITLOS, the International Court of Justice, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, read together, clarify in that setting. It argues that their principal significance lies in clarifying how existing duties of prevention, cooperation, regulation, and due diligence operate across different legal regimes without effacing the legal distinctions between them. It further contends that these opinions render the law of State responsibility more workable in a context where harm accumulates over time, multiple actors contribute to it, and serious risks arise for affected persons and communities. Finally, the Kiribati–Tuvalu illustration is used to briefly show what this clarified framework can explain, and where its limits remain, in relation to the stability of maritime entitlements, continuity concerns, and the protection of persons.