The Climate Emergency is Here: Pay Attention to the Youth!
By World’s Youth for Climate Justice*
With every passing year, the fight against climate change becomes more urgent. 2024 was the first year that we reached the 1.5 global average temperature threshold. The devastating impacts of the climate crisis can increasingly be felt all across the world: entire nations are in danger of being fully submerged by sea-level rise; species are in the process of extinction; towns and cities are repeatedly lambasted by floods and fires scorch the earth; our ocean, the lungs of the Earth, is succumbing to the disastrous effects of climate change; our human rights are at risk and we, as a species, are facing extinction. The world is burning. And yet, in spite of this indisputable reality, States continue to deny their obligations and responsibility under international and human rights law, hiding behind the legal uncertainty surrounding these obligations.
Climate Justice is at a crossroads. The years of 2024 and 2025 will go down in our history books for the global efforts to achieve climate justice through three, maybe four, advisory proceedings before international courts - all aimed to clarify the obligations of States under different sources of international law in relation to the climate crisis. Do States have an obligation to mitigate and prevent climate change, phase out-fossil fuels, and preserve the natural environment for present and future generations? Will historically high-emitting States have to cease their emission activities and repair damages resulting from climate change caused to those most impacted by this crisis? Will national, regional, and international judicial and quasi-judicial organs be able to hold States accountable for the emission of Greenhouse Gases and their resulting devastating impacts on our planet? These, and many more questions, have been raised within the advisory proceedings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). While we already received the opinion from ITLOS in May of 2024 and the opinion from the IACtHR in the beginning of July 2025, we are still awaiting the opinion from the ICJ. Additionally, a request was recently made to the African Court of Human and People’s Rights on the human rights obligations of African States in addressing the climate crisis - acceptance of the request from the Court is still pending.
These three courts were tasked with providing answers and clarifying the obligations of States to mitigate climate change, adapt to its effects, and protect the natural environment and the people in it. With the help of their opinions, the law can once again be effectively used as a shield in this battle for our survival; understanding our rights and being able to hold those violating them accountable will be a powerful tool for climate justice.
World’s Youth for Climate Justice (WYCJ) together with the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) have been campaigning for the advisory opinion to form the International Court of Justice for the last few years. The campaign has brought together young people from around the world who all believe in human rights, intergenerational equity, and a just and sustainable future for all. Together, we have been marching at the forefront of the climate justice movement in pursuit of these goals.
Given that young people will be among the most affected by the climate crisis, part of WYCJ’s mission has always been to build the capacity of young people and uplift their voices to be heard. In this spirit that WYCJ, together with partner universities, has decided to host the Global Climate Justice Symposium - a series of blog posts written by university students from around the world, providing their insights and perspectives on the climate advisory proceedings and their implications for their respective regions and national contexts. The symposium is meant to provide a platform to university students to engage with and critically reflect on the advisory proceedings, submissions made by respective States, and what their hopes are for the outcome of the proceedings.
The blog posts were all written throughout the months of March - July 2025 and will be published throughout the weeks of July. While some partner universities are publishing their chapters, the whole symposium with blog posts from students from over 20 countries and all regions of the world will be available on the WYCJ website (LINK HERE), acting as the central hub for the symposium.
While we wait for all the opinions to be released, this symposium offers a unique opportunity to listen to what young people have to say. Pay attention!
*World’s Youth for Climate Justice (WYCJ) is a global youth movement working to ensure that human rights and intergenerational equity are at the heart of all climate change litigation, policies, and negotiations. WYCJ campaigned together with Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) to request the Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice on Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change. For further information, please visit: https://www.wy4cj.org/.
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in the symposium’s blog posts are those of the author and do not represent the views of WYCJ. Furthermore, university chapters were prepared, edited, and approved by the respective universities; WYCJ cannot guarantee the level of scientific and legal inquiry, nor the content of blog posts.