A panel of legal experts affiliated with the United Nations (UN) decided that children have the legal right to sue nations over climate change, according to the New York Times. The panel is known as the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which interprets human rights law put forward by the UN.
According to the Committee’s 20-page white paper, children have a “right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment” which is “implicit in the convention and directly linked to, in particular, the rights to life, survival and development.” It also insists that children need to be given the ability to sue governments if their environmental rights are threatened, and that states should be obligated to provide access to such “justice pathways for children.” These would include “complaint mechanisms” that are additionally “child-friendly, gender-responsive and disability-inclusive.”
The convention that the document is referring to is the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a document considered to be the most widely ratified in the history of the world because every country has signed it except the United States, according to the New York Times. While the interpretative decisions made by the Committee on the Rights of the Child on documents like the Convention are not legally binding, countries including the U.S. have relied on their decisions to make cases in international courts.
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The UN panel’s document says that countries have an obligation to refrain from environmentally harming children and shield them from third parties who have the opportunity to do so, which they ought to minimize by “regulating business enterprises.” Countries are also said to be “obliged to devote financial, natural, human, technological, institutional and informational resources” to ensure children’s environmental rights.
It stipulates that countries must take “urgent steps” to safeguard the environmental rights of children by “transitioning to clean energy and adopting strategies and programs to ensure the sustainable use of water resources.” Countries must not only try to deal with actual environmental problems but also potential ones, “foreseeable environment-related threats arising as a result of their acts or omissions now, the full implications of which may not manifest for years or even decades.”
A UN panel said Monday that all countries have a legal obligation to protect children from environmental degradation, including by “regulating business enterprises” and allowing their underage citizens to seek legal recourse. https://t.co/8AS2A4ryye pic.twitter.com/5BDmBG62YJ
— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 28, 2023
The paper also states governments must protect children’s right to speak out about environmentalism and “must combat negative societal attitudes” regarding children’s “right to be heard” and “facilitate their meaningful participation in environmental decision-making.” It also says states must protect children from “misinformation” regarding environmental risks.
The decision follows a series of climate change activist stunts carried out by young people, such throwing soup at famous paintings. The environmentalist advocacy group Just Stop Oil, which coordinated the activists who threw soup at Van Gogh‘s “Sunflowers,” was funded by figures like heiress of the billionaire Getty family Aileen Getty and screenwriter Adam McKay.
In 2021, teenagers in Australia tried to sue their government on behalf of all Australian children and actually won the case before it was overturned in a Federal Court of appeals in 2022. The International Court of Justice is currently deliberately on the question of whether countries can be sued for “failing” to hinder fossil fuel emissions according to current international conventions.
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