Symposium on Climate (Im)Mobility and the African Court’s Climate Advisory Opinion: An Opportunity for the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights to Address the Climate Crisis from a Rights Lens

[Dzimbabwe Chimbga is an international human rights and climate justice lawyer. He is currently the Team Leader at the African Climate Platform and the lead drafter of the Request for an advisory opinion on climate change, currently pending before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.]

A Historic Petition

On 2 May 2025, the African Climate Platform (ACP), a Pan-African coalition of more than 50 African climate justice civil society organisations and activists, in collaboration with the Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU), filed a landmark petition with the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the African Court). The petition invites the Court to clarify the rights of the African citizenry and obligations of African Union Member States under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the African Charter) and other relevant instruments in responding to the climate crisis, including obligations relating to mitigation, adaptation, international cooperation, loss and damage, and the protection of vulnerable groups.

The petition, the first of its kind on the continent, invites the African Court to address the climate crisis through a human rights lens. It is anchored primarily in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the continent’s pre-eminent human rights treaty, ratified by virtually all African States (54 out of 55 states). Through the Request, the Court has been asked to delineate the scope of States’ obligations under several provisions of the Charter, including the right to a general satisfactory environment favourable to their development (Article 24), the right to self-determination (Article 20), the right to life (Article 4), the right to dignity (Article 5), the right to health (Article 16), and the right to development (Article 22). At its core, the case asks the Court to recognise the climate crisis as a human rights crisis and to affirm that climate action is not a matter of political discretion, but a  legal duty owed to the 1.58 billion people who call Africa home. 

The Climate Polycrisis and Disproportionate Impact on the Continent

Africa contributes the least, at under 4% of Greenhouse Gas emissions, yet it faces the most severe and disproportionate impacts of climate change. For the continent, the climate crisis is an existential crisis of climate injustice, eroding decades of development, displacing millions, and violating fundamental human rights. Climate change is a serious threat multiplier for the continent, driving economic turmoil, poverty, conflict, political instability, and destabilising migration. Against this backdrop, the African Court is being asked to rule on States’ legal obligations in the context of climate change. A rights-based, opinion would not only be a legal milestone: it would give governments and communities a rights-based foundation, underpinned by law, to tackle a crisis that voluntary responses have consistently failed to address. With voluntary government commitments failing to keep pace with the scale of this crisis, the African Court is now being asked to answer one of the most consequential legal questions of our time: what do African States owe their citizens under human rights law in relation to climate change?

A Seismic Wave of Climate Advisory Opinions

The African Court’s pending Advisory Opinion follows a recent trend of climate-change Advisory Opinions issued elsewhere. In the past two years, three other international tribunals have issued landmark advisory opinions clarifying State obligations on climate change. Together, they have reshaped the global climate law landscape: The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) was the first to hand down an Advisory Opinion in May 2024, holding that greenhouse gas emissions constitute marine pollution under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and that States have specific obligations to prevent, reduce, and control such emissions. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), in its Advisory Opinion delivered in mid-2025, addressed the climate emergency squarely through a human rights lens. It found that States must direct the maximum resources available to protect the most vulnerable populations, treated severe and irreversible environmental harm as engaging the highest order of legal concern, and broke new ground by recognising nature itself as a subject entitled to protection. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), in its unanimous Advisory Opinion of 23 July 2025 (the culmination of a UN General Assembly request) went furthest in scope, holding that States’ obligations to protect the climate system are erga omnes, meaning they are owed to the international community as a whole, and that both action and inaction contributing to climate harm can trigger legal responsibility.

Each of these opinions, while non-binding, has already begun to shape domestic litigation and policy, and courts worldwide cite them in decisions that hold States to account for inadequate climate action.

Why an African Court Opinion Still Matters

Given this wave of authoritative pronouncements, it is fair to ask what an African Court opinion can still contribute. The answer lies in the distinct geographical, legal and institutional space the Court occupies and in the gaps that other tribunals cannot fill.

First, the Court is invited to issue an advisory opinion applying a rights framework rooted in African realities. The African Charter is not a regional mirror of other human rights instruments: it was the first binding human rights treaty to recognise a right to a satisfactory environment, and it gives this right (Article 24), together with the right to development (Article 22), to peoples and not only to individuals. The African Commission has shown that these peoples’ rights can be enforced: in SERAC and CESR v Nigeria it found that Nigeria had violated the rights of the Ogoni people. The American Convention does not expressly protect either right. The inter-American system recognises the right to a healthy environment, but as an individual right, through Article 11 of the Protocol of San Salvador and the IACtHR’s reading of Article 26 of the Convention in Advisory Opinion OC-23/17. The ICJ does not apply a regional human rights treaty at all; it applies general international law, where no binding treaty guarantees these rights to peoples. An African Court opinion grounded in the African Charter can build genuinely Afrocentric climate jurisprudence and nuances that speak to the continent’s lived experience and unique vulnerabilities.

Second, because the African Charter is domesticated (and reflected) in various forms (primarily in constitutional frameworks and legislation) across AU Member States, an African Court opinion would offer the first authoritative, climate-specific interpretation of the Charter that litigants and judges in national courts across the continent can cite directly. This would give African climate activists and affected communities a common, regionally anchored legal standard to hold their own governments accountable, something the ICJ and IACtHR opinions, however influential, cannot provide with the same immediacy, force, and direct applicability to African litigants.

Third, the African Court’s opinion may play a key role in addressing the participation gap. Much of the momentum behind the ICJ and IACtHR opinions came from small island and Latin American States most exposed to climate harm. An African Court opinion offers African States (many of them equally, if not more, exposed yet historically under-represented in this wave of climate litigation) the chance to place their experiences and understanding of the law on the international record, rather than remain passive recipients of jurisprudence shaped elsewhere.

Finally, an advisory opinion from an African human rights institution may enhance Africa’s influence in global discussions. A rights-based opinion would provide African governments with a solid, legally grounded foundation for diplomatic negotiations on key climate-related commitments, including climate finance, loss and damage funding, and increased commitments from historically high-emitting countries. This approach would frame these issues as legal obligations and accountability measures rather than optional aid. Beyond this, clearly articulating States’ climate obligations under the Charter could accelerate the adoption of robust domestic climate legislation and policy, giving governments a rights-based mandate (and, in some cases, a rights-based obligation) to act.

An Opportunity the Court Should not Miss

The Request for an advisory opinion now awaits the African Court’s final determination. Procedurally, the Court may either decide the matter and issue a final decision based on the written observations already on record or exercise its inherent powers to call for oral submissions before making its final pronouncement. Either way, a decision should be imminent, and this case offers the African Court a unique opportunity to address one of the most urgent and existential threats facing humanity today. As the continent’s pre-eminent human rights court, it can deliver an advisory opinion within a framework of rights and obligations that speaks directly to African realities. Following ITLOS, the IACtHR, and the ICJ, the bar for a rigorous, rights-affirming opinion is high. An African Court opinion that meets that bar would not merely echo what has come before: it would complete the emerging global consensus that climate action is not optional but a legal duty owed to every person on the planet, and, for the first time, root that consensus in the lived experience of the continent least responsible for the crisis and most exposed to its harm.

This opening sets the scene: the Request, the wave of advisory opinions that precedes it, and the reasons an African Court opinion still matters. The contributions that follow in this symposium take up these questions in closer detail, from the scope of the Charter provisions the Request invokes to the procedural route ahead of the Court and what an opinion could mean for litigation, legislation and negotiation across the continent.

Photo attribution: Photo by Vlad Hilitanu on Unsplash