How young people have taken climate justice to the world’s international courts

Youth activist organisations including Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change and World Youth for Climate Justice recently coordinated massive online calls across two different time zones. These two global gatherings were in preparation for a coordinated global youth movement around the release of the most anticipated advisory opinion scheduled to be delivered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on July 23, 2025.

An advisory opinion is a legal interpretation provided by a high-level court or tribunal with a special mandate, in response to a specific question of law. Simply put, an advisory opinion is not legally binding in the way a court judgement between two nations would be.

But it is authoritative. The opinion carries significant legal, moral and political weight: since states often refer to advisory opinions when shaping policies, judges cite them for decisions and they’re used by civil society to hold governments accountable. An advisory opinion can influence shifting governance and principles governing it. I like to think of it as a northern star — it won’t change the reality but can guide potential outcomes and pave the way for future change.

As one of hundreds of participants attending both the online meetings, plus in my capacity as a researcher investigating the role of youth in climate law and politics, this collective action feels momentous.

The movement for an advisory opinion to ICJ began in 2019 when a few brave young people from the Pacific Islands stood up for the world. Twenty-seven law students at the Vanuatu campus of the University of South Pacific convinced their nation to champion climate action and accountability to the entire world by bringing climate justice to the world court.

For these students in the Pacific, the climate crisis means losing their identity, their culture and their homes to the rising sea levels and weather catastrophes. To the young people across the globe — including me — the concern about not being heard by world leaders becomes a shared reality, even though it is our future at stake.

Context: Four courts, four continents

It’s not just the ICJ that’s delivering an advisory opinion. The world is at a turning point. For the first time, four world courts or tribunals across four continents are being asked to clarify nations’ legal obligations in the face of the climate crisis. The ICJ’s advisory opinion is the centrepiece: but it sits within a broader push primarily by global youth and developing countries — to clarify what human rights, state responsibility and climate justice mean in law.

A “quartet” of advisory opinions now spans four judicial bodies: the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the ICJ, and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. See the diagram below to check the timeline of each court proceeding.

In addition to the advisory opinions, there are currently 3,113 climate cases across the globe. These include many youth-led cases that bolster solidarity for climate action, call for futureproofing environmental governance, and evoke soft power around the legal proceedings.

These legal proceedings are the result of bold, persistent advocacy. These cases are not abstract. There’s a moral arc here: They primarily stem from advocacy from global youth movements, developing countries, civil society coalitions and frontline communities demanding legal recognition of climate harms and protection of future generations.

As such, the role of youth in bolstering moral power is massive. Their influence in empowering states across the globe to embody climate leadership is critical to pushing for political action, even amid geopolitical realities.

Tracing climate litigation patterns suggests that youth are changing the environmental governance space: As youth litigators (both young lawyers and youth-led cases), youth negotiators and youth activists. Youth across these three spheres — law, politics and activism — are mutually reinforcing each other in their advocacy, unlike ever before.

Themes of climate justice in litigation, negotiation and social movements are deeply interconnected, rather than isolated from one another. Youth, who are active across all these spheres, often serve as key advocates, thereby reshaping governance dynamics in the process

The push for justice by youth is palpable, despite growing political concerns across the globe. Youth remains the common face of vulnerability, agency and promise. The call for justice is now.

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