YCJ Publications
YCJ Publications
| Category | Category | Keywords | Year | Title | Abstract | Actions |
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Journal Article |
Journal Article | 2025 |
Child/Youth Climate Litigation: Tracking Children’s Rights and Children’s Impact |
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. In this Article, these climate cases are considered from a children’s rights perspective. Using the Youth Climate Justice database, fifty cases are analyzed to consider two aspects of climate litigation—the children’s rights involved in the case, 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 being something primarily aimed at benefiting children to a phenomenon that can benefit the human rights of all. | More details Read publication | |
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Journal Article |
Journal Article | 2025 |
Editorial: Special Issue on Children’s Rights and Climate Justice |
It is an exciting time in children’s rights. Children and youth have had leadership roles in efforts to combat the climate crisis, challenging traditional attitudes to children as passive victims. Children have been heard by national governments, parliaments and others in power. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has produced a General Comment on children’s rights and the environment, with a special focus on climate change, with the involvement of thousands of children all over the world. In another groundbreaking turn for children’s rights, recent climate litigation has involved a significant number of children/youth as litigants and/or has included children’s rights arguments. There is much to research in the area. There is also much to be done to bring together practitioners/advocates with academics, who analyse these occurrences through the framework of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Questions must also be asked about the extent to which climate/environmental justice systems are sufficiently accessible and appropriate for children and youth. An international, interdisciplinary conference in 2024 aimed to fill this gap. The Youth Climate Justice project at the School of Law at University College Cork (funded by the European Research Council) hosted a conference in the area of children’s rights and climate justice. Scholars, practitioners and children/youth were invited to present their work on children/youth and environmental rights. There were critical discussions on children’s rights and interests in the climate crisis, and on what the right to a healthy environment means for children. As a result, this special issue has been produced with the aim to develop a body of research on climate justice and children’s rights which will support efforts such as academic work, advocacy in climate and other environmental cases, and the implementation of the General Comment on the right of children to a healthy environment. Another aim was to encourage critical thinking on a range of themes such as the extent to which justice systems are child/youth-friendly; the nature of the new General Comment; and the position of children as environmental rights activists. | More details Read publication | |
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Journal Article |
Journal Article | Climate Action; Climate Litigation; Participation; Lundy Model; Postpaternalism; COP | 2025 |
Participation and Postpaternalism: Child/youth Climate Action and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child |
Children and youth have been engaging in climate action in significant numbers in recent years. They have engaged in protests in the streets, as well as dialogue with governments and intergovernmental organisations. In recent years they have been taking climate cases against governments with the aim of decreasing emissions in an effort to mitigate the climate crisis. In this article, we examine this action through the lens of child/youth participation. We begin by examining how the right to a healthy environment has developed. We then consider how participation rights for children have developed since the advent of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and, in particular, how the Lundy model frames children’s participation. Drawing on various examples of child/youth climate action, we apply the concepts of space, voice, audience and influence. We also consider the “postpaternalism” in different types of participation in environmental initiatives. | More details Read publication |
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Journal Article |
Journal Article | Children's Rights; Youth Climate Action; Political Agency; Participation; UNFCCC; Global Climate Governance; Postpaternalism | 2025 |
COP and the Experiences of Children and Youth |
This article examines how children and youth exercise political agency – and confront its limits – within global climate governance processes linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It draws on 20 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with climate advocates aged 11 to 29 who have attended (or attempted to attend) UNFCCC Conferences of the Parties (cop s). Using an intersectional, rights-based framework informed by postpaternalist theory, we analyse the motivations, barriers, enablers and perceived impacts of child and youth participation. Findings show that peer mentoring and organisational support foster transnational advocacy, while adult-centrism, tokenism and material constraints continue to limit meaningful influence – particularly for participants under 18. Despite these challenges, young advocates adopt creative strategies such as informal lobbying, collective protests and digital campaigns. In doing this they assert their human rights and demand stronger climate action, including on fossil fuel phase-out and finance. We reflect on reforms necessary to strengthen the democratic legitimacy of global climate governance through the rights of children and youth. | More details Read publication |
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Journal Article |
Journal Article | Postpaternalism; UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); youth climate action; climate cases; right to a healthy environment. | 2024 |
Climate Action and the UNCRC: A ‘Postpaternalist’ World Where Children Claim Their Own Rights |
In this paper, it is argued that we are in a ‘postpaternalist’ era for children’s rights, involving grassroots action from children (for the first time, on a global scale) rather than well-meaning adults ‘giving’ children their rights. Child/youth climate action has involved under-18s acting for the environment through grassroots protest, media work and lobbying. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has arguably to date been approached in a paternalist way, whereby children need adults to help them to access rights. Yet, child/youth climate advocates have taken their own action, and demand equality as they enter rights spaces. They are frequently working with adults as equals and allies in litigating climate cases, for example. It is argued that (although there are rights challenges in a postpaternalist time) these young rights leaders have transformed human rights for the better, and adults should facilitate their work in a way that is child- and youth-friendly. | More details Read publication |
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Journal Article |
Journal Article | Convention on the Rights of the Child, Youth climate activism, Climate crisis, Intergenerational justice, Environmental rights | 2024 |
Child and Youth Friendly Justice for the Climate Crisis: Relying on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child |
The climate crisis is a human rights crisis, and one of the worst affected groups is children and youth. This same group has been key to climate action in and outside of the courts. As well as engaging in numerous consultative fora such as cop, and in the introduction of a General Comment on the right of children to a healthy environment, they have gone on to become key litigators in climate cases/applications at both national and international level. These justice processes are, however, notoriously ill suited to the particular needs of children and youth. Child friendly justice is a concept which has been elaborated in recent years by the Council of Europe. Yet climate litigation is very different to the cases (e.g. in family law) in which children have traditionally been parties – amongst other things it can involve very public campaigns. This article considers child and youth friendly justice in the context of the climate crisis through the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and through the concepts of access, participation, interests, and judgments. | More details Read publication |
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Journal Article |
Journal Article | Temporalities, Children's Rights, Climate Crisis, Sacchi v Argentina, Climate Justice, Child Litigation | 2025 |
New Publication Announcement: Temporalities in Crisis: Analysing the Sacchi v. Argentina Case and Children’s Rights in the Climate Emergency |
This article examines the Sacchi v. Argentina case, a landmark legal action led by children against five states for their role in climate change, analysed through the lens of temporality. The case, brought before the Committee on the Rights of the Child, was pivotal in linking the climate crisis to children's rights, despite being ruled inadmissible. This paper explores the multiple temporalities inherent in the climate crisis, such as urgency, gradualness and intergenerational effects, and how they intersect with legal frameworks and children's unique experience of time. By focusing on the narratives and claims of the child petitioners, this study investigates the disproportionate impacts of climate change on younger generations and the ways in which the law constructs time, offering a new perspective on the relationship between human rights and environmental justice. The analysis contributes to the broader discourse on how to address children's rights within the growing field of climate litigation. | More details Read publication |