December Newsletter

18 Dec 2025

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Hello and welcome to the December edition of our Youth Climate Justice Research Network newsletter! From all of us at the Youth Climate Justice Project, we would like to wish you all a very happy Christmas and extend our best wishes for the new year! 🎄🎅 

This network is supported by the Youth Climate Justice project at University College Cork. The project is led by Prof. Aoife Daly and funded by the European Research Council (EU). For more about the project and our team, visit our website. You can also watch the recordings of our online research forums here! 

If you have any events, publications, or opportunities you’d like featured in our next edition which will be in February, please email youthclimatejustice@ucc.ie by February 20th with ‘Research Network Newsletter’ in the subject line. 

Project Wrapped: Key YCJ Research Updates 2025 

• Our child/youth climate case law database now holds 81 cases, broken down to analyse children’s rights-related components, for researchers and litigators! 

• Our first country-specific Nepal case study of the YCJ project was successfully completed in 2025 with Indigenous (Newar) children/youth of Patan, Kathmandu. Art-based workshops and an art exhibition displayed their views and experiences of engaging in environmental action. Publications to follow soon! 

• The Young Advisory Team (YAT) met this month to celebrate their achievements. This year, the YAT shared their views on climate action in our research workshops, advised on child-friendly resources, co-created a Zine, presented at the hybrid 'State of Children's Rights in Climate Justice' conference (where one of our young advisors attended in-person!), amongst many other activities. We thank each young advisor for the amazing work they've done with us and will continue to do in their own climate action journeys! 

• Our PhD Researcher, Liesl Muller advised the African Committee on Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and its Working Group on Climate Change and Children’s Rights. The Working Group deliberated on its legal opinion to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Request for an Advisory Opinion on States’ climate change duties currently pending. It emphasises that children should be at the heart of the Advisory Opinion.  

• In total our project completed three major research studies on the environmental rights leadership of: 

• Children/youth at COP,  

• Children and youth in Nepal and  

• Children from many corners of the world (our YAT). 

We are continuing our interviews with youth and lawyers involved in climate litigation. In the coming two years we will be conducting further research in Canada, Ireland and Argentina. 

YCJ Publications:  

The YCJ Project has published/submitted the following journal articles, book chapter and monograph. This work is based our research on how children/youth are progressing human rights in the context of the climate crisis: 

1. We produced a ‘Special Issue on Children’s Rights and Climate Justice,’ by Aoife Daly, Florencia Paz Landeira and Nabin Maharjan – published in the International Journal of Children's Rights, 2025. 
2. ‘Participation and Postpaternalism: Child/youth Climate Action and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,’ by Aoife Daly, Niamh Purcell, Esther Montesinos Calvo-Fernández, and Emily Margaret Murray – published in the International Journal of Children's Rights, 2025. 
3. ‘COP and the Experiences of Children and Youth: Considering the Rights of Children and Youth in Global Climate Governance,’ by Florencia Paz Landeira, Alicia O’Sullivan, Aoife Daly and Katie Reid – published in the International Journal of Children's Rights, 2025. 
4. ‘Children at the Lekgotla: African Child-led Litigation for Remedies in the Climate Crisis,’ by Liesl Heila Muller – published in the African Journal of Climate Law and Justice, 2025. 
5. ‘Justicia Ambiental Intergeneracional,’ by Florencia Paz Landeira – published in EUNOMÍA. Revista en Cultura de la Legalidad, 2025. 
6. ‘Child/Youth Climate Litigation: Tracking Children’s Rights and Children’s Impact,’ by Liesl Heila Muller and Aoife Daly – published in Washington and Lee Law Review.  
7. ‘Challenging Anthropocentrism in Human Rights: Children’s Relational Approach to the Right to a Healthy Environment,’ by Emily Margaret Murray – submitted to the Journal for Human Rights and the Environment, submitted 2025. 
8. ‘Child/Youth Leadership and Climate Cases: Postpaternalism in the Courts?’ by Aoife Daly and Lucy Walsh, submitted to Onati Socio-Legal Studies Journal, submitted 2025. 
9. ‘Children speaking in turn: Redefining the right to participate through child & youth-involved climate litigation in South Africa’ by Liesl Muller, submitted to Onati Socio-Legal Studies Journal, submitted 2025. 
10. We submitted to Routledge the manuscript for a book entitled ‘The Rights of Children and Youth in the Climate Crisis – Action and Litigation’ by Aoife Daly, Florencia Paz Landeira and Liesl Muller (forthcoming 2026). 
11. ‘Children/Youth Environmental Action and Human Rights Law’ by Aoife Daly, Katie Reid, Āniva Clarke and Bach Pham Ngoc Lam, in Routledge Handbook of Young People and Environmental Activism ed. Ben Bowman and Sadiya Akhram (Oxfordshire: Routledge, forthcoming 2026). 
12. ‘Climate Action and the UNCRC: A ‘Postpaternalist’ World Where Children Claim Their Own Rights,’ by Aoife Daly, Nabin Maharjan, Esther Montesinos Calvo-Fernández, Liesl Heila Muller, Emily Margaret Murray, Alicia O’Sullivan, Florencia Paz Landeira, and Katie Reid – published in Youth, 2024. 
13. ‘Child and Youth Friendly Justice for the Climate Crisis: Relying on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,’ by Aoife Daly – published in the International Journal of Children's Rights, 2024. 
14. ‘Temporalities in Crisis: Analysing the Sacchi v. Argentina Case and Children's Rights in the Climate Emergency,’ by Florencia Paz Landeira – published in Children and Society, 2024. 

Major legal successes for children and youth this year include: 

1. The International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion on the duties of States in relation to climate change, which recognises children’s rights and intergenerational equity as core principles for determining state obligations, was brought about by the climate action of young people in Vanuatu. 
2. The Inter-American Court on Human Rights also released its Advisory Opinion on climate change, which contains some very liberal provisions on key aspects of children’s rights like access to justice. Children made oral presentations to the court during the hearings. 
3. African children applied to be admitted as Amici Curiae in the Advisory Opinion on climate change duties before the African Court. Watch this space! 
4. Juliana v. US came to an end, and even though it was not ultimately successful, it inspired a generation of young climate litigants. In September, the plaintiffs relaunched the case as Our Children’s Trust et al. v. United States at the Inter-American Court on Human Rights. 
5. Children in the US launched two new exciting cases, Dunn v. Wisconsin and Lighthiser v. Trump. 
6. The Held v Montana plaintiffs returned to court this month to launch another case, Held II, by which they are asking the court to enforce their court order against the State, which has been adopting legislation in contravention of the order. 
7. Young people in Norway had two outcomes to cases in their fight against Arctic oil exploration. In one case, they won, and the court set aside approvals for three separate oil field explorations. In the other case, at the European Court of Human Rights, the court did not find a violation of their rights, but made important findings about states' duties to conduct environmental impact assessments. 

Recent Child/Youth and the Environment Publications by other authors 

Journal Article: Ekhator and Umukoro Climate Change Human rights and the Nigerian child.pdf by Eghosa O Ekhator and Etareri Umukoro. 

Journal Article: Picturing Possibilities: Harnessing Photovoice to Foster Critical Engagement in Youth Facing the Ecological Crisis | The Canadian Journal of Action Research by Anne Corkery and Lauren Hill. 

Journal Article: Shared Waters, Shared Futures: Reflections on Climate and Indigenous Knowledge | The Canadian Journal of Action Research by Maeva Gauthier, Eriel Lugt, Jen Bagelman, C. Kuptana "Qaguna", Crystal Tremblay, Sarah Marie Wiebe. 

Book Chapter:  Environmental Education and Youth Empowerment | 16 | A Pathway to Sust  by Jose P. Jibin and Amutha Dhanaraj. 

Blog: Helping Children Thrive Through Climate Change: Strategies for Raising Resilient Youth in a Warming World - The Good Men Project by Ann V Sanson, Jenna Spitzer, Emily Reilly, and Ann S. Masten. 

YCJ Blog: "Exploring the Voices of Children in Climate Justice": My Experience by YCJ Young Advisor Thube. 

YCJ Blog: “The State of Children’s Rights in Climate Justice” Conference in Pretoria, South Africa YCJ Blog. 

Our easy read materials: Did you know that our website is packed with easy read versions of important child/youth climate cases, and academic journal articles? Find them HERE! 

Social media: Do you follow us? Catch up with project news as it happens by following us on: 

LinkedIn - youthclimatejustice@ucc.ie;  X (Twitter) - youthclimatejustice@ucc.ie; and  

Instagram - youthclimatej  

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