By Nneka Nwogwugwu
A U.N. panel said it could not immediately rule on a complaint by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and others that state inaction on climate change violates children’s rights, adding that they should have taken the case to national courts first.
The complaint was filed with the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2019 and the 18-member panel has been conducting hearings and deliberating since.
The 15 activists, aged between eight and 17 at the time, had argued that France, Turkey, Brazil, Germany and Argentina had known about the risk of climate change for decades but failed to curb their carbon emissions.
“I have no doubt this judgment will haunt the committee in the future,” said U.S. petitioner Alexandria Villasenor said of Monday’s judgment. “When the climate disasters are even more severe than they are now, the committee will severely regret not doing the right thing when they had the chance.”
There was no immediate comment from Thunberg.
The case is one of a growing number of climate litigation cases that invoke human rights and is seen as setting an important precedent.
The committee, made up of 18 independent human rights experts, concluded that a “sufficient causal link” had been established between the significant harm allegedly suffered by the children and the acts or omissions of the five states.
However, it accepted the arguments of the five countries that the children should have tried to bring cases to their national courts first, Aljazeera reports.
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