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On Monday, 30 March 2026, ten youth climate justice organizations (including eight from Africa) submitted an amicus curiae brief to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights to help guide the court with youth’s vision for how climate change affects human rights and what are the obligations of States to do something about it.
In a 128-page legal brief with 524 footnotes citing the latest climate science, the authors call on the African Court to help push States to urgently adopt measures to avoid irreversible climate tipping points by helping the planet keep to 1.5C of warming as established by the Paris Agreement, and to push African States to take urgent climate actions, hold corporations accountable, include youth in climate governance, and to ensure inter-generational climate justice in law and policy, recognizing the special vulnerability of children.
Eight African organizations including the African Initiative on Food Security and Environment, Black Girls Rising, Congolese Union for Nature Conservation and Sustainable Development, Earth Co-Existence Initiative, Jeunes Volontaires pour l’Environnement Sénégal, Juristes pour l’Environnement au Congo, Strategic Youth Network for Development, and Youth for Climate Morocco, worked alongside the Center for Human Rights and Environment and the youth-led Fast Action on Climate to Ensure Intergenerational Justice to develop the brief submitted today.
The authors urge the Court to apply a science-based perspective in the development of a much anticipated Court advisory opinion on climate change, soon to be published. They underscore the importance of taking into account the lived experiences of African youth as they face the climate crisis today, but also to consider the plight of future generations, and the deepening wrath of the climate catastrophe that they will face in years to come.
Youth, say the authors of the legal brief, should not bear a disproportionate burden of the climate crisis because governments are failing to act. The Court must send a clear message to States on which human rights are at stake, what climate policy measures are urgently required to prevent irreversible harm, what restauration, remediation and reparations, are necessary to uphold environmental and human rights, and where it is already too late.
The lack of climate action and policies to avoid surpassing the 1.5ºC warming guardrail by the end of the decade, means that many of the catastrophic climate impacts we are seeing now, are becoming irreversible—impacting environments and the livelihoods of billions of people. African youth make up 60% of the population, and are especially vulnerable to the climate crisis, including to rising temperatures and extreme weather events, which have direct impacts on environmental health, education, access to information and justice, just to name a few.
The authors are clear: we must act on the best available science, including advancing actions that have immediate short-term benefits such as reducing the emission of especially potent climate super-pollutants, such as methane gas, black carbon and dirty refrigerants. This is in addition to longer term decarbonization. Adaptation alone to global warming is not a suitable response to the deepening climate crisis. We can and need to do more, say the youth.
The 128-page legal analysis and its suite of recommendations to the Court are not merely legal narratives. The authors also includes the sobering and personal testimonies of African youth and their lived experience, stories, and pleas to the Court to be right by present and future youth. As one youth activist conveys, “The future of Africa’s children depends on urgent action.”
The soon-to-be published Court advisory opinion comes at a watershed moment when other international tribunals, including the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the International Court of Justice, and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, have issued their own advisory opinions, calling on states to act quickly and uphold human rights in the face of the climate crisis. African youth are calling on the African Court to align with other international tribunals, ensuring intergenerational climate justice for children, youth, and future generations.
Link to the Amicus Brief:
https://center-hre.org/wp-content/uploads/AfCHPR-Youth-Amicus-CHRE-FACE-et-al-30March2026.pdf