(23 Jul 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Hague, Netherlands – 23 July 2025
1. SOUNDBITE (English) Molly Quell, The Associated Press:
"So a coalition of small island nations spearheaded by Vanuatu has made a push to ask the UN’s highest court the International Court of Justice to weigh in on the legal responsibilities that countries have to combat climate change. Countries like Vanuatu are concerned that their homelands could disappear under rising sea levels or could be rendered uninhabitable by increasing global temperatures."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Efate Island, Vanuatu – 19 July 2025
2. Various aerial shots of sinking buildings ++MUTE++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Hague, Netherlands – 23 July 2025
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Molly Quell, The Associated Press:
"The question the judges have been tasked with is, first what countries have to do to combat climate change and, second, what obligations high emitting states like the United States or Russia are obliged to do to assist countries like Vanuatu who have borne the brunt of the industrial revolution."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Efate Island, Vanuatu – 17 July 2025
4. Various of the Sainte Jeanne D’Arc school
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Hague, Netherlands – 23 July 2025
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Molly Quell, The Associated Press:
"Typically questions in international law deal with nations, two countries have a dispute with one another. But an issue like climate change, it transcends national boundaries so judges at the court have a difficult question to determine whether or not countries on the other side of the world who are bearing the negative impacts of climate change are owed something from the countries like the United States and Russia who are enjoying the benefits of burning fossil fuels."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Efate Island, Vanuatu – 20 July 2025
6. Various of dead coral
STORYLINE:
The UN’s highest court is handing 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?
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.
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