[JURIST] Canadian Inuit leader Sheila Watt-Cloutier [Wikipedia profile] announced Wednesday that Inuit hunters in the North plan to file a petition accusing the US government of human rights violations by continually fuelling global warming. Troubled by the melting of Arctic ice caps, the Inuit hope the petition will put pressure on the US to reduce industrial emissions of heat-trapping gases. Watt-Cloutier, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference [advocacy website] representing 155,000 Inuit in Canada, Greenland, Alaska and Chukotka in the Russian far-east, said that the Inuit planned to file the petition with the human rights branch of the Organization of American States [official website], the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights [advocacy website] before a UN meeting in Montreal [CBC report] later this year to follow up on the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol [Kyoto Protocol]. Watt-Cloutier went on to say that Washington was not doing enough to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, although the US maintains that it is investing large sums of money in clean energy research and hydrogen fuel. Reuters has more.