The High Commissioner for India, Sir S. E. Runganadhan (1877–1966), extolled the work of the Indian Comforts Fund (ICF) in the foreword to the fund's War Record as ‘a remarkable piece of humanitarian work carried out during the war largely by British women for the benefit of India's fighting men and merchant seamen’. After providing a short overview of the fund's work between 1939 and 1945, the High Commissioner expressed his and his country's gratitude by writing, ‘India will ever remain deeply indebted to them [the members of the fund's executive committee and the host of unseen helpers throughout Great Britain] for this practical expression of their sympathy and goodwill towards her.’ Although the imperial tone of this message, coming from the High Commissioner appointed by the colonial government in Delhi, might not come as a surprise, the used framing of India's indebtedness for British humanitarian assistance to Indian soldiers and merchant seamen (lascars) who had done their share to contribute to Britain's and the empire's war effort must have been puzzling for many contemporaries on the subcontinent. Next to doubting the underlying idea of the voluntariness of India's war contribution, they might also have raised questions about who should be indebted to whom.

Early in the war, the fund's public appeals for support in the form of knitted comforts and donations had struck a different note. Back in the spring of 1940, the fund had justified its appeal by emphasising that Indian soldiers had ‘come so far across the sea to help in our [the British] war effort’.

State of the Art

The armistice of November 1918 did not mean an end to suffering or the need for humanitarian aid. On the contrary, Europe, Russia and the Middle East faced protracted humanitarian emergencies in the months and years that followed. Refugee crises emerged next to war-related displacements in the wake of the disintegration of former empires and the drawing of new borders during peace conferences. As a consequence of the Armenian Genocide and the Bolshevik Revolution, masses of people fled or were resettled, forcibly expelled or evicted. The subsequent civil wars in former Russia, the conflicts in Eastern Europe and the population exchange between Turkey and Greece – the outcome of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 and overseen by the League of Nations – produced new waves of displaced persons and desperate refugees in need of support. At the same time, millions of prisoners of war waited, often in miserable conditions, for their repatriation, while famine conditions prevailed in parts of Austria and Germany, reinforced by the Allied blockade, and a terrible famine spread in Soviet Russia between 1921 and 1923.

All these humanitarian emergencies demanded comprehensive continued or new relief efforts, a call that was taken up by established actors, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the national Red Cross societies and the Quakers, as well as newcomers in the field, such as Save the Children, the American Relief Administration, Near East Relief, the International Workers’ Relief, and the League of Nations.

In 1917, a small group of women, some of whom had just come out of purdah, began to meet regularly for Red Cross work in Birbhum, Bengal. Called upon by Saroj Nalini Dutt (1887–1925), a Bengali social reformer and early rural development activist, the members of the Birbhum Mahilā Samiti (Birbhum women's group) sewed garments and made dātuns (teeth-cleaning sticks) made from the neem tree as well as pacīsī boards (an Indian game) for Indian soldiers fighting in the First World War. Dutt, who was honoured for her activities after the war by the British Red Cross Society (BRCS), also sent a monthly consignment of sweets, condiments, and newspapers to soldiers serving in Mesopotamia. The Birbhum group, which normally focused its activities on the social and educational ‘progress’ of Bengali women, is only one of the many examples of Indian non-state humanitarian initiatives organised during the First World War. Given that these initiatives were embedded in the British imperial context and contributed to the empire's war effort, they are examples of a larger phenomenon that historians before me have labelled ‘imperial humanitarianism’.

Two decades later, Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), the future prime minister of independent India, and by then, President of the Indian National Congress (INC), became involved in propagating and organising Indian nationalist humanitarian activities. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), Nehru swayed the Indian national movement to create its own humanitarian programme, which saw the collection of funds and food items in favour of Republican Spain.

Introduction

The growing relevance of global administrative structures within transnational law is not an immediate space in which one would seek climate justice. The constraints of these structures have, in the past, prevented states from being able to achieve environmentally motivated regulatory changes. There are significant examples of corporate actors using investment treaties to protect their interests in the face of states’ environmentally focused law-making. However, there is a growing awareness of the environment in both treaty language and arbitral decisions in international investment law. An opening may be emerging for climate justice to extend into these global regulatory frameworks and even be elevated by the systems that had once constrained it. This chapter attempts to identify these openings.

Climate action, in its limited (albeit growing) possibilities within existing legal frameworks, is typically manifested by private actors bringing claims based on global, regional, or local climate concerns to courts. Despite the decidedly global nature of the issue, the litigation options are more common at the local and regional levels because of the laws available and jurisdictional limitations. Climate justice is often realized in domestic courts, applying local laws but often framed around broader international commitments. Many of these claims brought in the past years involve transnational litigants or issues, attempting to expose states’ or companies’ failures to implement environmentally sound policies (see infra chapter 12, Julia Stefanello Pires, ‘Leading Climate Cases Against Corporate Actors: Understanding Business Accountability for Human Rights Impacts Related to Climate Change’; for example, Milieudefensie et al. v Royal Dutch Shell plc., C/09/571932 / HA ZA 19-379, 26 May 2021; Urgenda Foundation v State of the Netherlands, HA ZA C/09/00456689, 13 January 2020).

Climate change has unequal effects on people in different parts of the world. Small Island Developing States face real and existential threats to their land and way of life on account of a crisis in which they have had little or no role to play, and with limited opportunity to take corrective action (Burkett 2015). Countries in Asia continue to be plastic havens for Europe, which for years has exploited weaker regulation in these regions. This has turned lands and oceans in Asia into toxic wastelands, while European countries continue to consume resources in an irresponsible and unabated fashion (Ellis-Petersen 2019). In 2023, we see the continued exploitation of critical minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there is a mineral race between the United States, Europe, and China (Kara 2023). This continued extraction has resulted in violence, war, and poverty and is often argued to be the result of a ‘failed state’ or ‘poor governance’ (Peša 2022).

However, this only tells a partial story. The existence of such extraction is on account of the ways in which people and communities have been marginalized as a result of a wide variety of economic, political, social, and structural factors on a global scale (Harlan et al. 2015). In fact, as Sultana argues, the root cause of much of the climate emergency that we are experiencing is on account of historical as well as ongoing exploitation of formerly colonized lands (Sultana 2022).

Introduction

Global companies develop as internationally integrated entities, but they are not subject to a common regulatory framework. Despite being among the main contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, these companies do not have their activities regulated in relation to climate issues either (RUGGIE 2014, 13). Although they contribute to the causes of global warming (IPCC 2007, 449), they are not obliged to assume their own share of responsibility for GHG emissions, nor are they held responsible for the consequences and impacts of climate change. In July 2022, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly declared that the right to a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a human right (UN 2022). This resolution also recognized that climate change poses serious threats to the ability of present and future generations to effectively enjoy all human rights.

Addressing the business responsibility to respect human rights, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) unanimously endorsed the United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGPs) in June 2011. Although it does not specifically address climate issues, the UNGPs states that businesses have a responsibility to respect internationally recognized human rights, which includes not violating human rights and addressing any negative impacts their activities may cause (UN 2011). However, these documents are voluntary and do not provide any sanctions for parties who do not respect their terms and principles.