Resilient40 welcomes the ICJ’s advisory opinion as a landmark affirmation that states have legally binding obligations under international law including human rights and environmental law to act on climate change. We emphasize that failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or subsidize fossil fuels may constitute an internationally wrongful act, reinforcing the right of vulnerable nations to hold polluters accountable.
Resilient40 highlights the resonance between the ICJ opinion and our petition to the AfCHPR filed in May 2025, alongside the Pan African Lawyers Union, African Climate Platform, Natural Justice and Environmental Lawyers Collective seeking clarity on the scope of African states’ obligations under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR).
The ICJ’s confirmation amplifies our call for enforceable standards on mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage and accountability before the African Court. Both instruments link climate action to rights like life, health, food, water, housing, and a healthy environment (Article 24 of the ACHPR).
Resilient40 stresses consistency with the AfCHPR petition’s emphasis on women, youth, Indigenous peoples, displaced populations reinforcing intergenerational equity. The ICJ’s warning on fossil fuel subsidies aligns with the AfCHPR’s plea for clarity on state duties to regulate third-party actors.
This advisory opinion confirms what we’ve long argued: climate inaction is not just immoral, it is illegal. We call for the AfCHPR to mirror the ICJ’s strong stance, but grounded in African human rights law and context.
We need Africa’s highest human rights court to establish binding standards for loss and damage, reparations and corporate responsibility, all central to surviving this crisis.
The ICJ opinion, though non-binding, now serves as a powerful precedent that strengthens the AfCHPR petition ahead of its argument in 2025–2026. Resilient40 urges the African Court to issue its own advisory opinion that affirms and operationalizes these duties, creating a regionally grounded, people-centered jurisprudence.
A favorable decision from the AfCHPR would mark a historic step, unifying human rights and climate justice within an Afrocentric legal framework.
Resilient40 views the ICJ advisory opinion as a game-changing reaffirmation of our call to the AfCHPR. We now argue with renewed confidence that the African Court must build on this momentum, offering a robust, legally binding roadmap for climate justice across Africa, protecting vulnerable communities, holding states and corporations accountable, and ensuring equitable remedies and reparations under African human rights law.
