Please sign our petition in support of the youth-led climate movement seeking an Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice.
The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) is partnering with the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change who are calling on world leaders to use a critical tool of international law to respond to the climate crisis.
Pacific Islanders are asking the court to advise world governments on their obligations to safeguard the rights of current and future generations from the adverse effects of climate change. This would set in motion urgently needed legal processes to protect people whose lives are already being upended by the climate crisis — families who must rebuild homes that have washed away due to rising sea levels, whose food supplies have been destroyed by saltwater intrusion, or are forced to relocate.
If you want the U.S. to back this measure advancing climate justice, help us call on the Biden administration to vote yes on it at the next U.N. General Assembly meeting.
Dear Special Envoy Kerry,
I write to ask for your support for efforts to seek an Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on legal implications of climate change.
As you know, time is running out for states to take meaningful action to avert the worst impacts of climate change. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated on April 4, 2022, world leaders must cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 45% this decade to stay within the 1.5 degree limit set by climate scientists. As he emphasized in a recent public statement: "We are on a fast track to climate disaster."
We know that this climate crisis poses a grave threat to human rights. Around the world, the climate emergency is already thrusting people into involuntary exile. Millions more may be killed, dispossessed, or forced from their homes by increasingly severe storms, flooding, erosion, increased conflict, and other climate harms.
These catastrophic risks face all of humanity--but not in equal portions. Those communities and nations--including island states in the Pacific--who did the least to contribute to the problem historically are now reaping the worst of its effects.
The United States has the power and the duty to help rectify this injustice. I urge you to join the call for an advisory opinion from the ICJ on states' human rights obligations in the face of climate change. Obtaining this opinion would set crucial legal processes in motion, clarify human rights law in the matter, prompt a more ambitious climate response under the Paris Agreement, and cement both the global consensus on the scientific fact of climate change and the need for bolder action.
A vote to request an advisory opinion from ICJ is expected to come before the UN General Assembly this September. We urge the U.S. delegation to vote yes. Humanity cannot wait. Lives are at stake. Governments must use every tool at their disposal, including international law, to meet the demands of this moment and protect human rights in the face of looming climate disaster.
Sincerely,
[your name]
