UN's ICJ Decides Every Country Must Fight Climate Change
On Wednesday, July 23, 2025, the United Nations’ highest court, the International Court of Justice, decided that every country should help reduce global warming. Climate change remains an ongoing major threat, as many countries continue to emit fossil fuels instead of taking true action.
A group of law students from islands in the South Pacific formed the idea of court action with support from Vanuatu, a small island nation that, like many others, is struggling against the climate crisis. After years of determination, they persuaded the UN’s General Assembly to ask the ICJ to form an opinion on two important questions about global warming:
1. What does the law need countries to do to protect the climate?
2. What will happen if countries don’t follow what they are supposed to do?
On July 23, Judge Iwasawa Yuji, the court president, read the opinion, which all fifteen judges agreed upon unanimously. Judge Iwasawa announced that climate change harms “all forms of life” and that a “clean, healthy, and sustainable environment” is a human right. The opinion stated that countries are required by law to help stop global warming, and not taking action is a “wrongful act”.
The court said, countries that don’t try to fight against the climate crisis may have to pay for the harm they have done, including to other countries. Many of them aren’t keeping their promises of helping the environment, even though they have received numerous warnings throughout the years. A lot of Western nations are still using fossil fuels, despite the harmful impacts they create on the climate.
Last December, the International Court of Justice listened to two weeks of arguments, hearing more than a hundred different groups and countries that wanted to share their thoughts about global warming.
Poorer countries have been asking richer ones to make a bigger effort to stop fossil fuel production over the years. Richer countries are producing most of the pollution that’s causing climate change, but poorer countries are getting impacted more by that pollution.
As an example, in 2022, places in East Africa endured their most severe drought in forty years, leaving over twenty million people in danger of extreme starvation. Climate change has made perilous droughts “at least 100 times more likely,” the WWA said.
In addition, Matthias Huss, a glaciologist with Zurich’s Federal Institute of Technology, along with a glacier monitoring group, Glamos, stated, “It is not the very first time that we’re seeing big landslides in the Alps. I think what should be worrying us is that these events are becoming more frequent, but also more unpredictable.” when talking about the glacier in Blatten, Switzerland collapsing around two months ago.
As of right now, global warming is continuing to increase.
SOURCES:
https://newsforkids.net/articles/2025/07/29/uns-top-court-says-nations-must-fight-climate-crisis/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9w15nggj58o
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4w9ggzxv4o