Child and youth-involved climate litigation– From children’s rights to everyone’s rights
3:00pm - 4:30pm /
Thursday 8th May 2025
/ Venue: Seminar room 11 Rendall Building
Type: Seminar /
Category: Department
- Marketing, Recruitment and Events
- Admission: Free to attend
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Professor Aoife Daly
School of Law, University College Cork
Child and youth-involved climate litigation– From children’s rights to everyone’s rights
Children and youth have been engaging extensively in climate action around the world. They have been doing this by protesting in the streets, talking with governments, and most recently by taking climate litigation against governments and companies. The Saachi and Duarte Agostinho petitions for example claimed (before the Committee on the Rights of the Child [CRC] and the European Court of Human Rights respectively) that children’s rights were breached by several countries where there were insufficient efforts to curb climate change. Children can be involved in the litigation process extensively, or simply by having their name as parties in the case. Some cases involve a legal success in favour of the environment, around half do not (LSE, 2024). The case law database of the European Research Council-funded Youth Climate Justice project breaks down climate cases with children's rights in mind. In this presentation analysis of the data will be presented. Over 50 cases are analyzed to consider the ways in which children were involved, and the significance of the outcomes of the cases. It is concluded that climate cases are a new form of child participation in society, and that child participation has moved from i. being something primarily aiming at benefitting children to ii. a phenomenon that can benefit the human rights of all.
Professor Aoife Daly teaches law at University College Cork (Ireland), and specialises in human rights law. Aoife's research focuses on children’s environmental rights, climate action, and access to justice. She is author of Children, Autonomy and the Courts (Brill, 2018) and Child/Youth Climate Action and Human Rights Law (forthcoming 2026 with Routledge). In 2023 she secured a European Research Council Consolidator Grant to build a team to carry out a large scale research study on child/youth climate justice - inside and outside the courts - around the world. She taught at the University of Liverpool 2014-2020.
School of Law, University College Cork
Child and youth-involved climate litigation– From children’s rights to everyone’s rights
Children and youth have been engaging extensively in climate action around the world. They have been doing this by protesting in the streets, talking with governments, and most recently by taking climate litigation against governments and companies. The Saachi and Duarte Agostinho petitions for example claimed (before the Committee on the Rights of the Child [CRC] and the European Court of Human Rights respectively) that children’s rights were breached by several countries where there were insufficient efforts to curb climate change. Children can be involved in the litigation process extensively, or simply by having their name as parties in the case. Some cases involve a legal success in favour of the environment, around half do not (LSE, 2024). The case law database of the European Research Council-funded Youth Climate Justice project breaks down climate cases with children's rights in mind. In this presentation analysis of the data will be presented. Over 50 cases are analyzed to consider the ways in which children were involved, and the significance of the outcomes of the cases. It is concluded that climate cases are a new form of child participation in society, and that child participation has moved from i. being something primarily aiming at benefitting children to ii. a phenomenon that can benefit the human rights of all.
Professor Aoife Daly teaches law at University College Cork (Ireland), and specialises in human rights law. Aoife's research focuses on children’s environmental rights, climate action, and access to justice. She is author of Children, Autonomy and the Courts (Brill, 2018) and Child/Youth Climate Action and Human Rights Law (forthcoming 2026 with Routledge). In 2023 she secured a European Research Council Consolidator Grant to build a team to carry out a large scale research study on child/youth climate justice - inside and outside the courts - around the world. She taught at the University of Liverpool 2014-2020.