[Bin Zhao holds a PhD in international law] Climate litigation has moved from national courts to international benches. On 9 April 2024, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) spoke first. On 21 May 2024, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) followed. A year later, on 3 July 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) added...
[Milagros Mutsios Ramsay is a J.S.D. Candidate at Yale Law School. She currently serves as the Legal Advisor to the Presidency of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights] The Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 on Climate Emergency and Human Rights constitutes one of the most ambitious legal articulations of State’s obligations in the era of climate crisis. This...
[Mariana Cruz Astudillo holds a law degree from the University of Chile, belongs to the Colla First Nation, and is a research associate at the Centre of Law and Climate Change Studies at the University of Valparaíso (CEDYCC)] Introduction On July 3, 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (hereinafter the Court) issued Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 (hereinafter OC-32/25) in response to a...
[Ignacio Vásquez Torreblanca is the Executive Director of the Centre for Law and Climate Change Studies at the University of Valparaíso, Chile, a Research Assistant at the Max Planck Institute, Germany and a Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK] Latin America is one of the regions most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, but it is also a...
[Laura Baron-Mendoza is a legal consultant to the Office of the Prosecutor and is part of the core team responsible for drafting the upcoming policy paper on environmental crimes under the Rome Statute. She is also an international law consultant and PhD candidate at McGill University] The Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ recent Advisory Opinion on Climate Emergency and Human Rights (AO-32/25)...
[Lucas Carlos Lima is professor of international law at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and coordinator of the Brazilian Researchgroup on international courts and tribunals] The Advisory Opinion on the Climate Emergency and Human Rights (OC-32/25), rendered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR or Court) on 29 May 2025, offers a contribution to clarifying the relationship between international environmental...
[María Paula Marroquín works at the Center for Studies and Dissemination of the Constitutional Court of Ecuador. She holds a Bachelor of Laws from San Francisco de Quito University and an MA in Social Justice and Education from University College London.] In July 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHtR) issued the Advisory Opinion AO-32/25 on Climate Emergency and Human...
[Eduardo Cavalcanti de Mello Filho is an MPhil candidate at the Faculty of Laws, University College London. This post was written while the author was a research associate at the Centre for International Law, National University of Singapore.] In this post, I claim that Advisory Opinion 32/25 (AO-32/25 or Opinion) of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Court) reshapes the way...
[Erick Guapizaca Jiménez is an S.J.D. candidate at the University of Michigan Law School, a lecturer at the Universidad Internacional del Ecuador, and an Assistant Editor with Opinio Juris] Once again, the Inter-American Court stands at the edge of history with the Advisory Opinion 32/25 (AO-32/25). This time, the Court addresses a monster of our own making, climate change. Responding to...
[Digvijay Rewatkar is an LLM candidate at Harvard Law School and an international lawyer with seven years of experience. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the views of his affiliations. This post was drafted before he commenced his course at Harvard Law School.] Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on the readers’ vantage point, the seabed...
[Digvijay Rewatkar is an LLM candidate at Harvard Law School and an international lawyer with seven years of experience. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the views of his affiliations. This post was drafted before he commenced his course at Harvard Law School.] The Advisory Opinion (AO) of the International Court of Justice (ICJ)...
[Monica Iyer is an Assistant Professor of law at the Georgia State University College of Law] Climate change-related migration is an issue very much in the public mind, and the question of whether it is legal to send someone back (or refoule them) to a place where they might face human rights harms because of climate change has become a key...