Informing the African Court: ILP's Support for Four Amicus Briefs in the Advisory Opinion on Climate Change

By Maeve E. McDermott, Legal Manager, Environment and Sustainable Development Programme 

Photo Credit: ILP

The past two years have brought an unprecedented amount of international judicial focus on the climate crisis. In May 2024, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea issued an Advisory Opinion on States’ obligations to protect the marine environment from climate change. In July 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights followed with its Advisory Opinion situating climate obligations within a human rights framework for the Americas. Later in July 2025, the International Court of Justice issued its own landmark Advisory Opinion, clarifying the broader obligations of States under international law to address the climate crisis and the consequences of failing to do so.

Building on this momentum, the Pan African Lawyers Union, supported by the African Climate Platform, Natural Justice, Resilient40, and the Environmental Lawyers Collective for Africa, petitioned the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights in May 2025 for an Advisory Opinion of its own. The Advisory Opinion will bring an explicitly African perspective to this growing body of climate jurisprudence, interpreting instruments such as the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the ‘African Charter’), the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (the ‘Maputo Protocol’), the African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (‘the Kampala Convention’), and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.

As the African Court considers its response, amicus curiae submissions play a vital role in the proceedings. They allow the Court to draw on specialist expertise, comparative legal analysis and lived experiences that might otherwise be absent from the record, helping the Court to reach opinions that are rigorous, well-evidenced and reflective of the full range of interests at stake. Upon receiving the request for an advisory opinion, the African Court invited observations from African Union Member States, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and relevant African Union organs and entities. Other interested organisations and individuals could also apply for permission from the African Court to file amicus curiae briefs. ILP supported four such interventions before the African Court, each bringing a distinct lens to the questions under consideration, as set out further below. 

The Centre for Climate Justice – Bangladesh

The Centre for Climate Justice – Bangladesh (CCJ-B) submitted an amicus curiae brief that offers a South–South comparative perspective, drawing on Bangladesh’s own experience of climate finance and adaptation to argue that the global finance gap, loan-heavy climate finance and sovereign credit rating methodologies structurally undermine African States’ capacity to deliver African Charter rights. It emphasises States’ duty to cooperate, covering debt and credit rating reform, loss and damage reparations and an “alignment obligation” requiring States to align finance flows with climate-resilient, rights-consistent development. A team of volunteer lawyers from Hogan Lovells Cadwalader, including Emily Julier, Bryony Widdup, Haylea Campbell, Denisa Ismalaj, Elie Kommel, Yasmin Waljee, and Adrian Walker, partnered with CCJ-B on this brief, supported by barristers from Matrix Chambers, as well as Mark Odhiambo Odaga of ODG Advocates, a Kenyan human rights, energy, climate, and environmental justice lawyer. 

Rights and Resources Initiative and Landesa

Drawing on decades of research into land tenure across dozens of countries, the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) and Landesa argue in their brief that secure land tenure for Indigenous Peoples and local communities, including the women within them, is not merely a precondition for States’ climate obligations, but the very mechanism through which those obligations must be discharged. The brief also raises concerns about “green grabbing”, with certain climate and conservation programmes themselves becoming vectors of land dispossession. ILP coordinated support from Natasha Jackson and Margherita Cornaglia at Landmark Chambers on the request for admission, and Dr. Lois Lane and Deia Russell-Smith at Cornerstone Barristers for a comprehensive review of the brief itself, with Maria Cristina Mundin and Lucy Claridge from ILP also supporting the substantive review of both submissions.

Coalition of Environmental Law and Human Rights Clinics

This wide-reaching submission was prepared by a global coalition of university-based environmental law and human rights clinics, led by the Alliance of Environmental Legal Clinics of Latin America and the Caribbean alongside partner clinics across Africa, Latin America and the United States. Drawing on the Inter-American Court’s own climate opinion, the brief proposes how comparable human rights standards might be interpreted within the African human rights system and was drafted collaboratively by more than 30 law students across 13 countries and two continents. Maria Cristina Mundin and I reviewed this brief, alongside Dr. Tejas Rao from the University of Cambridge. 

The Loss and Damage Youth Coalition

The Loss and Damage Youth Coalition (LDYC) is an international youth-led organisation of more than 1,500 activists, negotiators, researchers and professionals from over 90 countries, working to advance action on climate-induced loss and damage, including equitable financing to address it. Drawing on its sustained engagement in UNFCCC processes and the lived experiences of its members, LDYC’s brief addresses States’ obligations relating to loss and damage. It examines interstate obligations under customary international law, as well as obligations owed to individuals and communities under human rights law. ILP arranged support from a team of volunteer lawyers from a preeminent global law firm to review LDYC’s brief.

Together, these four interventions reflect the breadth of expertise ILP is able to mobilise on behalf of civil society, spanning macroeconomic and finance analysis, to land tenure and Indigenous rights, comparative human rights law and the voices of the youth most affected by decisions taken today. ILP is grateful to all the lawyers and legal experts who supported these amicus submissions. As the African Court’s proceedings progress, ILP will continue to monitor developments and support our partners serving as amicus curiae in these proceedings. 

International Lawyers Project provides pro bono legal support to more than 100 civil society organisations, communities and individuals each year. Through our Environment and Sustainable Development programme, ILP works with our partners to protect community land rights and biodiversity, combat environmental crime and corruption, provide guidance on the implementation of fiscal tools for sustainable development, and ensure a just transition. 

If you need assistance or advice in this area, please contact us at contact@internationallawyersproject.org to discuss how we can help.