UN Recognizes Children’s Power to Sue Nations Over Climate Change

International flags fly in front of the United Nations headquarters on Sept. 24, 2015, before the start of the 70th General Assembly meeting. Dominick Reuter/AFP via Getty Images

The United Nations is now recognizing what it believes to be a child’s right to take legal action against a nation over the perceived damages from climate change.

On Aug. 28, the U.N. Child Rights Committee published guidance in a 20-page document (pdf) titled “Convention on the Rights of the Child”—or General Comment No. 26—which argues that “the climate emergency, the collapse of biodiversity and pervasive pollution” has become a global threat to children, and that their efforts to bring attention to this crisis were the reason for the publication of the document.

Using a “rights-based approach” for children, the document states that the “process of realizing children’s rights is as important as the result” and that “environmental degradation, including the consequences of the climate crisis, adversely affects the enjoyment of these rights, in particular for children in disadvantaged situations or children living in regions that are highly exposed to climate change.”

“Beyond their immediate obligations under the Convention with regard to the environment, States bear the responsibility for foreseeable environment-related threats arising as a result of their acts or omissions now, the full of implications of which may not manifest for years or even decades,” the report states.

Its objectives are to focus on what it calls the adverse effects of climate change on the “enjoyment of children’s rights, provide an understanding of those rights, and clarify the obligations of states to the convention while giving “authoritative guidance” on legislative and administrative measures to address the harms caused.

Under Article II of the Convention, the document also proclaims that nations are obligated to protect children against “environmental discrimination.”

“Children in general, and certain groups of children in particular, face heightened barriers to the enjoyment of their rights, due to multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination,” the document states.

Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told The New York Times, “A strong statement under this convention would add another brick to the growing edifice of international human rights law on climate change.”

Judge Sides With Montana Activists

In August, a Montana judge sided with 16 young climate-change activists who sued several state agencies in 2020, claiming that they infringed on their right to a clean environment by investing in fossil fuel development.

The two-week trial was the country’s first climate-change trial.

The activists, ages 5 to 22, said climate change was negatively impacting their physical and mental health.

District Court Judge Kathy Seeley ruled that “Montana’s GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions and climate change have been proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate change impacts to Montana’s environment and harm and injury to the Youth Plaintiffs.”

Climate Change, Liberty, and Private Property

In the ruling (pdf), Judge Seeley says her ruling is based on the state’s constitution, which reads, “All persons are born free and have certain inalienable rights. They include the right to a clean and healthful environment and the rights of pursuing life’s basic necessities, enjoying and defending their lives and liberties, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and seeking their safety, health and happiness in all lawful ways.”

Judge Seeley cuts off the sentence with ellipses after the phrase “healthful environments” in the ruling.

Some would argue that this omission is because ideas of pursuing basic necessities, defending liberty, and possessing private property don’t coexist with climate-change ideologies.

In a previous interview, intelligence analyst and investigative journalist Brian O'Shea discussed the World Health Organization’s “One Health” ecological civilization policies written to achieve an “integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals, and ecosystems.”

The endgame, Mr. O’Shea said, would be policies modeled after the land grabs implemented by the Chinese Communist Party that restrict how farmers could manage their own agriculture and how much land an individual could acquire.

These policies would also control information, labeling any concepts that don’t fall in line with the prescribed narrative as misinformation.

“Without respect to the sovereignty of nations, it aims to manage the internal affairs of husbandry, agriculture, where and how people live, and where we do business,” Mr. O’Shea said. “To me, this sounds like eminent domain.”

‘New Environmental Challenges’

According to Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy and author of “The Indictment: Prosecuting the Chinese Communist Party & Friends for Crimes Against America, China, and the World,” these pandemic treaties leave it open for any event viewed by the WHO as a crisis to be declared as a public health emergency.

“It could be anything that Tedros [WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus] decides is a public health emergency, such as climate change, gun violence, inadequate access to abortion or transgender affirming care,” Gaffney said. “It can be any number of things that have sweeping public policy implications that would be dictated by an unelected foreign entity.”

The Convention’s document echoes this potential outcome, stating that though it’s focused on climate change in this particular document, “its application should not be limited to any particular environmental issue. New environmental challenges may arise in the future, for example, those linked to technological and economic development and social change.”

Aldgra Fredly contributed to this report.