Oxfam Scotland is calling on Scottish lawyers to help fight global warming by coming up with the most innovative legal case for a developing country to take legal action on injuries suffered from climate change.

The international aid agency's is holding a competition centred on an imaginary country - Algoria - but the climate impacts it faces are based on the latest "real life" data and findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The political context is also one facing many developing countries today. Oxfam is inviting 3,500-word complaints to identify the plaintiffs, defendants, remedies sought, and arguments that are considered enforceable in an existing international legal forum.

Oxfam hopes that the competition will provide effective free advice to developing countries on how they could best use international law to protect their people's human rights in the face of climate change.

The competition coincides with the recent publication of Oxfam's new report Climate Wrongs and Human Rights, which says that rich countries' excessive carbon emissions are violating the rights of millions of the world's poorest people to life, security, food, health and shelter.

Eilidh Whiteford, Oxfam Scotland, Campaigns Manager said, " Human rights are at the heart of the fight to stop global climate change. I am calling on Scottish lawyers, academics and law students to take part in an international competition and come up with the most innovative legal case for a developing country to take legal action on injuries suffered from climate change.

"Rich country polluters have been fully aware of their culpability for many years. If they fail to cut emissions and help people now, they could face legal action later."

The report author Kate Raworth added, " Climate change was first seen as a scientific problem, then an economic one. Now it is becoming a matter of international justice. Human rights principles give an alternative to the view that everything - from carbon to malnutrition - can be priced, compared and traded. These principles must be put at the heart of a global deal to tackle global climate change."

Oxfam's report identifies major "hot spots" where current climate-change policies clash with existing international human-rights principles. It also says rich countries are failing to deliver sufficient finance and technology to help poor countries shift to low-carbon pathways.

Lawyer Peter Roderick, co-director of the Climate Justice Programme, commented, "International human rights law needs to reflect the realities of climate change. There are important roles for lawyers in helping it evolve and using existing international law so the poorest people can protect themselves from climate damage".

A panel of eminent lawyers will judge the competition, which is being run in collaboration with Advocates for International Development and the Climate Justice Programme, and the winners will be announced in March 2009. To find out more go to:
www.oxfam.org/climatecompetition

The winning entries will be published on each organisation's websites and the winners will each receive a GBP100 voucher for books or eco-goods from the Centre for Alternative Technology.

ENDS