World’s Youth for Climate Justice collaborates with Youth for Ecocide Law and discusses important issues
WYCJ’s Maëlle Blacharz and Aditi Shetye talk about the importance of youth participation and mobilisation while answering questions raised by Laila Martins (Y4EL) raises important issues that are integral to both youth campaigns.
What is World Youth for Climate Justice and why does it exist?
World’s Youth for Climate Justice (WYCJ) is a youth-led initiative to bring climate change and human rights to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to seek an advisory opinion. It seeks to clarify the obligations of States to protect the rights of current and future generations from the adverse effects of climate change. This climate justice initiative first started in 2019 with Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) and were joined by young people around the globe. This global campaign believes in the power of the people to save humanity from environmental disaster.
Climate justice, based on a human rights approach, is the idea that people around the globe are not affected equally or fairly by the impacts of climate change. Even worse, pre-existing inequalities have been exacerbated by the climate crisis such as poverty, well-being, wealth inequality, gender relations, and many others. Thus, through its campaign, WYCJ intends to ensure representation, inclusion, and protection of the rights of those most vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. This entails promoting equity, assuring access to basic resources, and ensuring that current and future generations can live in a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.
2. What are your main activities focused on and how can youth and people in general support you?
The adoption of the resolution to request an advisory opinion by the World’s Highest Court on climate change and human rights by the General Assembly of the United Nations represents a major step towards achieving climate justice and safeguarding the future of our planet. Thus, the ICJ will now, for the first time, have the opportunity to address the whole climate-related issue.
Outside the UNGA, this was led by WYCJ and PISFCC. It was the youth that first brought this to the attention of world leaders. WYCJ builds on this momentum and now campaigns for States to participate in the ICJ proceedings. Through legal advocacy, we aim for meaningful participation in these high-level processes by persuading States to not only participate but also bring the youth perspective before the Court. Regionally, WYCJ engages in region-specific legal tools to enable youth to participate meaningfully in inter-regional decision-making processes.
To support the WYCJ campaign for climate justice, anyone can become a ‘Friend of the initiative’ (FOI) by filling out the form available on the following link https://www.wy4cj.org/friends-of-the-initiative. The more we support the initiative, the more impact our action will have before the ICJ.
Anyone who is interested in joining this movement could also reach out to us at hi@wy4cj.org. We are always looking forward to fostering strong collaboration that would help protects the human rights of future generations and achieve climate justice.
3. How can a partnership between our two organizations lead to more impactful change?
Our fights meet because acting to protect present and future generations from the adverse effects of climate change also means mitigating climate change and the repercussions it has on nature, ecosystems, and species. By seeking to recognize ecocide as a punishable crime at national and international levels [including it in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC)], Y4EL also aims to safeguard young people from the massive destruction of the environment. Criminalizing ecocide would have a significant impact on the right of young generations to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. In compliance with the adage Nulla crimen sine lege, it is important to recall that in order to pursue and condemn a State for the crime of ecocide, it is crucial to attribute an internationally wrongful act to certain actions or omissions of States when dealing with the climate crisis. This criminalization would mean ensuring that perpetrators of such crimes against the environment will not go unpunished, the primary objective being to deter or even prevent the commission of ecocide.
WYCJ and Y4EL campaigns are youth-led and strive to put the youth’s perspective on decision-making tables. Both campaigns are based on an anthropocentric and ecocentric approach, respectively, and complement one another. Indeed, this combination would enable finding a fair balance in the preservation of human lives on one hand and the environment on the other. Nowadays, this idea resonates with the concept of One Health which recognizes the existing interdependence between human health and ecosystems and species health. Eventually, the more we intend to protect humans from the adverse effects of climate change, the more we should seek to prevent ecocide from happening in the first place. For all these reasons, a partnership between our two organizations would certainly lead to more impactful change.
