KAREN TUMANYAN

Member of the Supreme judicial council

DOI: https://doi.org/10.59546/18290744‑2026.1‑3‑20

Annotation.

This article examines the necessity of enshrining the right to a healthy environment in the second chapter of the Constitution in light of international and European legal developments. It traces the emergence and gradual consolidation of this right from the 1972 Stockholm Declaration and the 1992 Rio Declaration to the 2022 resolution of the United Nations General Assembly. Particular attention is given to the role of the Aarhus Convention in shaping procedural guarantees and to the case‑law of the European Court of Human Rights, through which environmental protection has been linked to the rights to life, private life, and property, thereby affirming States’ positive obligations.

Through a comparative legal analysis, the article presents constitutional solutions adopted in several European countries and explores the specific features of their judicial application. It argues that incorporating the right to a healthy environment into the second chapter of the Constitution would render the State’s environmental obligations directly applicable, broaden the toolkit of constitutional review, and provide an interpretative framework for the systematic development of national environmental legislation.

The purpose of the study is to assess the necessity of constitutionally entrenching the right to a healthy environment in the second chapter of the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia, devoted to fundamental rights and freedoms.

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