The campaign to bring the case to the ICJ was initiated in 2019 by 27 law students at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. It has now grown to be the largest case in the 77-year history of the ICJ and will consist of oral arguments from 98 countries and 12 international nongovernmental organizations.
In order to get on the ICJ’s docket, the students who began the case first had to convince Vanuatu’s government to back their campaign for an advisory opinion, then get other Pacific states on board by bringing the issue before the Pacific Forum, the premier diplomatic body in the Oceanic region.
The pandemic in 2020 interrupted their campaign, preventing the youth from traveling to United Nations’ climate conferences to advocate for their agenda. But the group moved online and managed to drum up support from Pacific island states, Caribbean nations, countries in Africa and Latin America, and dozens more. Slowly, the group…