(23 Jul 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
++EXTENDS EDIT WITH SHOTS OF COURTROOM AND EXTERIORS OF ICJ++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Hague, Netherlands – 23 July 2025
1. Various shots of attendees arriving in ICJ courtroom
2. Various shots of attendees
3. Various shots of Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s minister for climate change
4. Pan of ICJ judges arriving
5. Mid of judges
6. Various shots of ICJ courtroom session
7. Various exteriors of ICJ building
8. UN flag
STORYLINE:
A panel of judges arrived at the UN’s highest court on Wednesday to hand down a historic opinion on climate change Wednesday – a decision that could set a legal benchmark for action around the globe to the climate crisis.
After years of lobbying by vulnerable island nations who fear they could disappear under rising sea waters, the U.N. General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice in 2023 for an advisory opinion, a non-binding but important basis for international obligations.
A panel of 15 judges was tasked with answering two questions.
First, what are countries obliged to do under international law to protect the climate and environment from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions?
Second, what are the legal consequences for governments when their acts, or lack of action, have significantly harmed the climate and environment?
“The stakes could not be higher. The survival of my people and so many others is on the line,” Arnold Kiel Loughman, attorney general of the island nation of Vanuatu, told the court during a week of hearings in December.
In the decade up to 2023, sea levels rose by a global average of around 4.3 centimeters (1.7 inches), with parts of the Pacific rising higher still. The world has also warmed 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times because of the burning of fossil fuels.
Vanuatu is one of a group of small states pushing for international legal intervention in the climate crisis but it affects many more island nations in the South Pacific.
Any decision by The Hague-based court would be non-binding advice and unable to directly force wealthy nations into action to help struggling countries. Yet it would be more than just a powerful symbol, since it could serve as the basis for other legal actions, including domestic lawsuits.
Activists could bring lawsuits against their own countries for failing to comply with the decision and states could return to the International Court of Justice to hold each other to account.
The United States and Russia, both of whom are major petroleum-producing states, are staunchly opposed to the court mandating emissions reductions.
Simply having the court issue an opinion is the latest in a series of legal victories for the small island nations.
Earlier this month, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found that countries have a legal duty not only to avoid environmental harm but also to protect and restore ecosystems.
Last year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that countries must better protect their people from the consequences of climate change.
In 2019, the Netherlands’ Supreme court handed down the first major legal win for climate activists when judges ruled that protection from the potentially devastating effects of climate change was a human right and that the government has a duty to protect its citizens.
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