Plastic pollution is toxic and everywhere. Now, legal experts say it’s a human rights violation.

Plastics don’t just pose a threat to the marine environment and people’s health; they jeopardize basic human rights. This is the framing that a growing number of legal experts, policymakers, and environmental groups are using in conversations about a proposed United Nations treaty to “end plastic pollution,” which is undergoing another round of negotiations this week in Geneva .

The draft of the treaty that negotiators began working on last week mentioned human rights at least twice. But the text didn’t go far enough, according to legal experts, and now, at the second part of the fifth round of treaty talks — running from August 5 to 14 — there’s been a push among civil society and some negotiators to place a stronger emphasis on human rights in order to justify specific policies,