United Nations human rights and legal experts have urged all states to back a forthcoming UN General Assembly resolution that would operationalise the International Court of Justice’s unanimous 2025 Advisory Opinion on states’ climate obligations, warning that attempts to block debate risk undermining urgent global action. The experts said the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu will lead negotiations on the resolution during the second half of May 2025 and described the timing as critical given new scientific and humanitarian signals.
New data cited by the experts indicates the Paris Agreement threshold of 1.5°C global warming could be breached as early as May 2029, and the past year’s spate of cyclones, hurricanes, wildfires and floods across Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and Africa has already inflicted severe human rights harms and losses. “States must comply with their obligations to cooperate in the effective protection of the environment, the climate system and human rights,” the experts said, noting the ICJ Opinion drew on a wide range of binding international law and was issued in response to a consensus request from the General Assembly.
Experts expressed alarm at what they described as a “disturbing pattern of growing obstruction” across UN fora aimed at removing explicit references to fossil fuels and the ICJ Opinion, including at the Human Rights Council. They pointed to the stalemate at the UN Climate Conference in November 2025 (COP30), where states were unable to uphold the legal and scientific standards clarified by the ICJ or agree on meaningful mitigation outcomes, as evidence that delaying difficult conversations will only worsen risks.
As a counterweight, more than 80 states from different regions have launched a separate multilateral conference — led by Colombia and the Netherlands — to press concrete, equitable action on the transition away from fossil fuels. The UN experts said the draft General Assembly resolution is intended to complement such multilateral efforts by encouraging collaborative, inclusive approaches for national legislation on fossil fuel phase-out, removal of fossil fuel subsidies, systematic documentation of climate harm and mechanisms to address reparation claims.
The experts also highlighted financing gaps, saying the Paris Agreement’s Loss and Damage Fund remains “severely underfunded” and needs reform to meet the needs of communities already suffering irreversible climate impacts. They stressed that reparations identified in the ICJ Opinion overlap with pre-existing state duties to prevent environmental and human rights harm, conserve and restore ecosystems, and support effective climate action in countries least responsible for the crisis.
Framing the resolution as a path to cooperative, non-adversarial solutions, the experts urged states to view the measure as mutually beneficial: a tool for shared learning and strengthened international cooperation on interlinked crises of climate, inequality and conflict tied to the fossil fuel economy. They argued that a General Assembly resolution would help set the direction for coordinated multilateral action to protect the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment — including a safe climate — and to safeguard peace and the enjoyment of human rights for present and future generations.
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