Geneva (AP): The island nation of the Maldives said it made a big step forward toward protecting its very existence, which it fears is threatened by global warming.

The Indian Ocean archipelago, which says it risks loosing its entire territory to rising sea levels, leaving its 360,000 inhabitants with no place to go, drummed up enough support in a key UN body to request a study on the impact of climate change on human rights.

"We feel it is very important that the Human Rights Council start addressing the issue of climate change," said Maldives Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid yesterday.

"If we look at the consequences of climate change, it is the individual human rights of every person on the planet which is going to be violated, including the right to life," he told The Associated Press by telephone from the Maldives.

Some countries were unhappy to link climate change to human rights. Russia said the United Nations already has enough agencies tackling the problem.

But Shahid said the Maldives wants the council's work to be complementary to other UN organisations dealing with climate change, such as the Nobel Prize-winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The 47-nation council said in the document adopted by consensus that it is "concerned that climate change poses an immediate and far-reaching threat to people and communities around the world and has implications for the full enjoyment of human rights."

The Maldives, which consist of 1,200 islands, were joined by other small island countries such as the Fiji Islands and Tuvalu in offering the resolution. They have said they risk disappearing altogether if global warming continues unabated and that the world would see hundreds of thousands of stateless people who have nowhere to go.