External Links and Publications
UCC School of Law Highlights, 2023.
The Youth Climate Justice project is delighted to feature in many of UCC School of Law's h from 2023.
A Year in Review 2023 - A Message from the Dean, Professor Mark Poustie
Intergenerational rights are children's rights: Upholding the right to a healthy environment through the UNCRC
This article reflects on intersections between intergenerational equity, children's rights and the rights of future generations. Recent climate cases involving children and youth are considered, and the fact that few rely on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is analysed. It is emphasised that intergenerational rights are children's rights – children are a crucial link between current and future generations. In particular the principle of the best interests of the child, which is widespread in national legal systems, should be relied upon more frequently in climate cases. Arguments can be made that failing to accord sufficient attention to children's rights and interests in climate policies violates the best interests principle. Relying on the CRC may increase the chance of successful outcomes in environmental and climate cases; progressing the right to a healthy environment for all. It will also ensure that adequate attention for children's rights is embedded in such cases.
Link to full article below.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09240519231195753
Dr Aoife Daly awarded almost €2m in European Research Council Consolidator Grant
Annoucement of Dr Daly’s project which will analyse the growing trend of child and youth climate activism, particularly how they are claiming and asserting their own rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Read the full piece here:
Climate Competence: Youth Climate Activism and Its Impact on International Human Rights Law.
Abstract
Those who are under-18 are not often associated with the exercise of political rights. It is argued in this article however that youth-led climate activism is highlighting the extensive potential that children and young people have for political activism. Moreover, youth activists have come to be seen by many as uniquely competent on climate change. Youth activists have moved from the streets to the courts, utilising national and international human rights law mechanisms to further their cause. They are not the first to do so, and the extent of their impact is as yet unclear. Nevertheless, it is argued here that through applications such as Saachi (an application to the Committee on the Rights of the Child) and Duarte Agostinho (an application to the ECtHR) they are shifting the human-centric, highly procedural arena of international human rights law towards an approach which better encompasses person-environment connections.
https://academic.oup.com/hrlr/article/22/2/ngac011/6565727
Children/youth climate advocates ‘doing’ rights themselves: Post-paternalism for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?
Child/youth climate advocacy reveals the paternalism of much of our approach to the CRC. We are experiencing ‘post-paternalism’, I suggest here, involving grassroots action from children (for the first time, on a global scale), rather than well-meaning adults ‘giving’ children their rights. Future approaches to the CRC must reflect this.
