UNGA Resolution Event with German Civil Society
by Jule Schnakenberg
On 16 April 2026 the German Association for the United Nations (Deutsche Gesellschaft für die Vereinten Nationen, DGVN) and World’s Youth for Climate Justice hosted a webinar in German on the upcoming UN General Assembly resolution welcoming and operationalising the ICJ climate change advisory opinion.
Max Zuber from the DGVN-Board kindly opened the event and welcomed guests and speakers. The event was kicked off by Ms Lee-Anne Sackett, Special Envoy of Vanuatu to the United Nations in New York. Lee-Anne reminded the audience of the origin story and the motivation for Vanuatu to pursue this case, as well as shared the objectives of the resolution and gave the audience an update on the current status of negotiations.
The discussants were Prof. Christian J. Tams, Professor for Public International Law at King’s College London and Legal Advisor to Zambia in the ICJ adivsory proceedings; Lea Main-Klingst from ClientEarth, a long-time supporter of the ICJ advisory opinion on climate change; John Peters, Partner at Rechtsanwälte Günther and a litigator focused on German climate litigation; and Jule Schnakenberg, World’s Youth for Climate Justice’s Executive Director. The event was moderated by Oliver Hasenkamp from the German Association for the United Nations, building on a previous event we hosted together in 2022.
Key themes that emerged were the opportunities for national litigation, which were now available because of the ICJ climate ruling, and the necessity of incorporating the ICJ further into multilateral spaces and the opportunities and arguably risks this resolution offers.
Our message remained clear: countries must welcome back the advisory opinion in its entirety and push for operationalisation measures that would truly enable what the UNGA had set out to do when requesting the opinion.
You can watch the recording here.
