The Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, Astrid Puentes Riaño, confirmed that she will testify before the Australian court as amicus curiae, an intervenor with a strong interest in the matter. Puentes Riaño will advise the court on the applicable international law on assessing climate impact before authorizing development projects.

Puentes Riaño is to intervene in light of last year’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision, in which the ICJ found that assessing the risk of significant harm, and exercising due diligence to avoid activities that cause significant damage to another state’s environment, constitute a customary legal obligation on states. Australia voted in the UN General Assembly to support a resolution endorsing the ICJ’s opinion on May 21.

“Advising States to help advance decisions based on international law and participating in priority legal cases aligns precisely with my mandate, as it was established by the Human Rights Council,” Puentes Riaño said in a statement.

The Australian Conservation Foundation initiated the judicial review in October. It asserts that the country’s Environmental Minister Murray Watt unlawfully approved extension of the North West Shelf (NWS) project’s operating life. The advocacy group argues that Watt wrongfully neglected the climate impact on the Dampier Archipelago, and approved the project without ascertaining the scale of the pollution.

In a parallel proceeding, Friends of Australian Rock Art asserted that Watt’s approval failed to consider the ongoing and irreversible damage to the Murujuga Cultural Landscape.

When approving the project’s extension for another 45 years in September 2025, Watt stated that he had imposed 48 strict conditions to mitigate the impact on the Murujuga rock art. One of the conditions requires that the operation site reduce 60% of its current gas emissions by 2030.

The NWS project is one of the largest LNG operation sites in the country, contributing $1.3 million USD to the Australian economy in 2024. According to a report prepared by the Australian Conservation Foundation that year, the operation site’s lifetime emissions would be 13 times more than the country’s annual emissions from all sources.

From JURIST, May 31. Used with permission.

Photo: UNESCO

The resolution calls upon states to comply with the obligations set out by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), giving legal force to the non-binding advisory opinion issued by the UN high court in July 2025. Pursuant to the UNGA resolution, countries now have a duty under international law to take all possible steps to avoid contributing to climate change.

Vanuatu, in collaboration with other Pacific island nations, drafted the proposed resolution earlier this year, urging countries to consider the impacts their greenhouse gas emissions have on small nations. These nations are among those facing the largest burden of climate change, such as extreme weather events, crop failure, and sea level rise, despite their lack of a significant contribution to global warming.

However, following negotiations amongst the states, the text of Vanuatu’s resolution was altered significantly. Notably missing from the adopted draft was the “International Register of Damage” provision, which would have created the duty to maintain a “comprehensive and transparent record” of evidence of damage attributable to climate change.

Nevertheless, under this resolution, states may be required to compensate injured nations for any damage they contribute to in violation of ICJ-mandated climate obligations.

In a statement after the vote, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reiterated that those contributing the least to climate change are “paying the largest price” for its effects. He also indicated the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels, stating:

The science is clear: fossil fuels are the principle driver of the climate crisis. The path to climate justice runs through a rapid, just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy.

The resolution’s text also affirms that states need to do their part to keep global temperatures from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius, a target set out by the Paris Climate Agreement that would require a rapid decline in fossil fuel emissions to achieve.

Despite an overwhelming 141 votes to adopt the resolution, eight countries were in opposition, including three on the list of the 10 largest greenhouse gas emitters globally: the United States, Russia and Iran. Also voting against were top oil producers such as Saudi Arabia.

Following the resolution’s adoption, Deputy Representative of the United States to the United Nations Tammy Bruce issued a highly critical statement opposing the resolution and challenging its legality. Bruce said that the ICJ’s “unfounded” view that states have a legal duty to prevent global transboundary harm is legally incorrect. He also rejected the notion that “climate change is an unprecedented challenge of civilizational proportions” as politicized and alarmist.

In the US, the Trump administration has vocally opposed the idea that climate change is a serious global issue, and has continued to roll back climate protections within the country. Following Vanuatu’s proposed resolution, the administration pressured the small nation to withdraw its draft due to its potential to “pose a major threat to US industry.”

In spite of the pushback from major emitters, Guterres described the resolution’s adoption as a victory for the planet, calling it an advance for climate justice and for holding states accountable for their actions.

From JURIST, May 22. Used with permission. Internal links added.

Note: The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) issued a similar ruling last year. See our podcast on the ICJ and IACHR rulings, “Meanwhile, the planet is dying….”

Photo: NASA via Flickr

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Photo: Anali Marquez Huanca via Facebook

Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged Magyar’s incoming government to take immediate steps to restore democratic norms in Hungary. The organization called for the swift dissolution of the Sovereignty Protection Office, a body established in 2023 with broad powers to investigate journalists, civil organizations, and academics that receive foreign funding. HRW also pressed for an end to emergency decree powers that have allowed Orbán’s executive to bypass the parliamentary process since 2020.

HRW urged the incoming government to drop criminal charges against Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony, who is being prosecuted for holding the city’s Pride March last June in defiance of a ban imposed by Orbán’s government, and against Géza Buzás-Hábel, organizer of the Pride march in Pécs.

Orbán’s measures against dissent of course mirror those of Vladimir Putin, and indeed his defeat diminishes an emerging pro-Russian bloc on the continent, also including Slovakia and (outside the EU) Serbia and Belarus. The fall of Orbán is expected to free up a €17 billion loan to Ukraine that his government had effecitvely blocked.

However, Péter Magyar is a creature of the center-right, and a former Orbán ally. His Respect & Freedom (Tisza) party broke from Fidesz in 2020, in response to Orbán’s growing authoritarianism. His proclivities are fundamentally conservative, and he may not mean a full de-Orbánification. In a bad sign, Magyar on April 15 held what the Israeli Foreign Ministry called a “warm introductory phone call” with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pointing to a continuity in ties. Orbán’s Hungary and Donald Trump’s United States are the only two countries Netanyahu has been able to safely visit since the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest to face war crimes charges in November 2024.

Nonetheless, among those around the world taking courage in the fall of Orbán are the Israeli protesters who have mounted a campaign of militant demonstrations against Netanyahu and his wars. (Jurist, JP, PRI, EuroNews)

Sidelined by the world media spotlight, a more stark struggle with stakes just as high for the survival of democratic norms is emerging in the South American nation of Peru. As Hungarians voted, so did Peruvians, in a crowded field of 35 candidates following years of political chaos that have seen 10 presidents in as many years. Leading the field was Keiko Fujimori, perennial candidate of the hard-right Fuerza Popular.

Keiko is the daughter of ex-dictator Alberto Fujimori, who shamefully died a free man in December 2024, having been released from prison after 17 years following a pardon for his convictions for corruption and human rights abuses. The younger Fujimori remained an unabashed supporter of the elder to the very end, and her potential election promises a reversal of the process of de-Fujimorification that Peru has undergone since the fall of his eight-year period of strongman rule in 2000.

A decision on who Keiko Fujimori would face in a run-off was delayed by several days after the National Office of Electoral Process (ONPE) found that a private contractor failed to deliver ballots to dozens of polling stations across the province of Lima, preventing more than 52,000 citizens from voting on time. One of her two leading contenders, former Lima mayor Rafael López Aliaga, alleged widespread fraud and called for the vote to be annulled. The EU election observer mission reported that it had found no evidence of fraud. But tension mounted as López Aliaga’s supporters mobilized to the street.

López Aliaga, known by his appropriate nickname “Porky,” is also a figure of the hard right, although of a more Catholic bent than Fujimori, and has similarly run on pledges of a harsh crackdown on soaring crime and the narco economy. In an echo of Trump’s Alligator Alcatraz, he has proposed building penal colonies in the Amazon rainforest, surrounded by moats filled with vipers.

López Aliaga has not dropped his demands for annullment, but it now emerges that Fujimori will face a contender from the left in the June 7 run-off. This is Roberto Sánchez Palomino of Juntos por el Perú. Sánchez is the political heir of imprisoned ex-president Pedro Castillo, a political outsider of campesino origins whose 2021 election shook up Peru’s establishment. Castillo’s ouster and detention by order of Congress the following year ended his contentious rule and sparked weeks of protests that were met with massive deadly repression. Sánchez, who had served in Castillo’s cabinet, similarly ran with strong support from rural Andean regions, traditionally excluded from Peruvian politics, and similarly wears a traditional campesino sombrero.

There is a sense of deju vu here, as Keiko Fujimori has made it as far as a presidential run-off in 2011, 2016 and 2021. During the first run, she brought in Rudolph Giuliani as “national security advisor.” In the second run (taking place five months before Trump was first elected here in Gringolandia), she was defeated by the center-right Pedro Pablo Kuczynski after Verónika Mendoza, the left-wing candidate who was bumped out of the race in the first round, threw her support behind him to avoid a re-Fujimorification of the country. As persident, it was Kuczynski who pardoned Alberto Fujimori, in a betrayal of the progressive-minded Peruvians who had helped elect him.

With the center now having effectively collapsed in Peruvian politics, this kind of outcome, at least, is excluded from possibility. However, a win by Keiko Fujimori on her fourth try for the presidency portends a far worse outcome. (Americas Quarterly, Jurist, France24, France24, AFP, Reuters)

Peru may seem far removed from the world stage compared to Hungary, but the Great Powers are definitely playing their chess game here as well. Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar has called on Peru’s next government to “take back” the Chinese-controlled port of Chancay, portraying the deep-water facility as a military threat to the hemisphere. Salazar, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, said during a hearing on April 16 that Washington must help Peru wrest the megaport from Chinese hands. “The new Peruvian government, which will be elected next June, must take it back, that port, take it back, and the United States will help them,” Salazar said.

She argued that the port, just up the coast from Lima, has “dual usage” potential, meaning it could shift from commercial to military operations, allowing Chinese submarines, warships and aircraft carriers to operate from Peru’s territory. (SCMP)

Even a new President Fujimori would be unlikely to take this bait from Washington, as China, like the US, is a free-trade partner of Peru and top investor in its lucrative mineral sector. But there’s much contention about Chinese versus North American influence in the country. The last interim president, José Jerí, who had faced a wave of Gen Z protests last year, was finally removed by Congress this February following unregistered meetings with two Chinese businessmen. The incumbent interim president José María Balcázar is of the left, and popular anger at Peru’s traditional political class is palpable.

Whether it is the populist left of Sánchez or the populist right of Fujimori that prevails in June, the Great Power pressures on Peru will remain. The implications for Peru internally, however, will be very different—and this also has regional implications, as the right has made recent electoral gains throughout Latin America: just over the past months, in Chile, Bolivia and Costa Rica. A new right-authoritarian bloc is emerging, just as the Trump regime is launching new adventures in gunboat diplomacy.

Hopefully, Peru will not be the next addition to this bloc. But a Fujimori victory could mean a fatal blow to Peru’s deeply troubled democracy. A Sánchez victory, on the other hand, would heighten the social contradictions in Peru—with both opportunities for a more meaningful democracy, and dangers of a backlash from the conservative establishment.

Photo: Wikipedia

Featured speaker on April 3 was a ski-masked “Captain Marcos,” presumably the same charismatic spokesman once known as “Subcommander Marcos.” He delivered an exegesis entitled: “A Peephole into the Storm in the World: Nation-States Under Attack” (Una mirilla a la Tormenta en el Mundo: Los Estados-Nación bajo ataque). Marcos portrayed a supra-national imperialism under Donald Trump, in which “the nation-state has no decision-making power.” Marcos decried the “kidnapping” of Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, and the US oil blockade on Cuba, especially noting that Mexico has been effectively barred from shipping oil to the Caribbean island nation. He hailed the tenacious resistance of the Cubans and Palestinians.

Marcos asserted that in the US-Israeli war against Iran, the big oil companies are the ones who benefit, as the price of oil has dramatically risen. “That’s what needs to be discussed: who is profiting from these wars?” (La Jornada via Mexico Solidarity Media)

Image: Enlace Zapatista

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Composite image via GIGA. Gen Z protesters in different countries use appropriated image from One Piece manga. Fair use rights asserted

“Every key climate indicator is flashing red,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. “Humanity has just endured the 11 hottest years on record. When history repeats itself 11 times, it is no longer a coincidence. It is a call to act.”

Most alarmingly, the analysis found that the Earth is now retaining more solar energy than it releases into space. Most of this trapped heat is being absorbed by the world’s oceans. Global ocean heat reached a record high in 2025, and that measure has risen twice as fast over the past 20 years as it did over the previous 40. Impacts of the current imbalance are likely to last centuries if not millennia. (TNH, DW, PRI, Scientific American)

Image: blende12/Pixabay

The World Food Programme (WFP) warned March 17 that the escalating hostilities in the Middle East could lead to record levels of food insecurity, and the largest disruption in the global economy and humanitarian efforts since the COVID-19 pandemic.

WFP deputy executive director and chief operating officer Carl Skau said: “If this conflict continues, it will send shockwaves across the globe, and families who already cannot afford their next meal will be hit the hardest.” Skau urged the international community to mount an adequately funded humanitarian response.

Since the United States and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran in late February, the conflict has spread to encompass much of the region, causing thousands of civilian casualties and forcibly displacing over 3 million people. The WFP predicts 45 million people may slide into acute hunger (a level known as IPC Phase 3+) if the conflict continues. Due to the heavy reliance of food and aid distribution on energy, the skyrocketing price of oil has placed heightened strain on already over-stretched aid supply lines. The disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has also increased fertilizer costs, posing a more long-term threat to food security.

In 2025, an estimated 318 million people across 68 countries were already experiencing acute food insecurity, with 41.1 million under “Emergency” conditions or worse (IPC Phase 4+). The number of people facing catastrophic hunger (Phase 5) remained alarmingly high in 2025, exceeding 1 million.

Import-reliant countries, predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, face the greatest risk. Humanitarian organizations are already spread thin by tightening budgets, as well as the proliferation and exacerbation of global crises. Global funding for foreign aid has contracted exponentially in recent years, with a sharp decline following President Trump’s signing of Executive Order 14169, which effectively suspended most operations of USAID. Together, these developments place extraordinary pressure on humanitarian organizations, leaving millions at risk of famine. Sudan and Somalia were named as particularly vulnerable.

From JURIST, March 19. Used with permission.

Note: Hunger in the Global South has already been exacerbated by Trump’s trade tariffs regime, while spikes in the price of oil and grain since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022 have contributed to popular privation and unrest worldwide.

Photo: Alex Blokha via Wikimedia Commons

The draft resolution urges states to fulfil their obligations in regard to climate change, in line with the advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July 2025. These include the adoption of nationally determined contributions of atmospheric carbon to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting the global average temperature increase to well below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

The draft resolution also calls on UN member states to phase out fossil fuels, and to protect communities subject to forced displacement induced by climate change. This is a question of particular concern to Pacific island nations such as Vanuatu.

The draft resolution would also create an “International Register of Damage,” providing a transparent record of loss and damage linked to climate change, as Climate Home News reports. This echoes the ICJ’s advisory opinion that injured states may claim compensation for the non-compliance of climate change obligations.

Negotiations regarding the draft resolution are now underway. The UN General Assembly is expected to vote on the draft resolution at the end of March. Candy Ofime, climate justice researcher at Amnesty International, said: “This is a vital moment for states to show they stand on the side of climate justice—not delay, weaken, or turn away from their legal obligations and moral duty.”

The Amnesty statement called governments out for weakening global action on climate, denouncing the recent rescission of the 2009 Endangerment Finding and removal of greenhouse gas regulations by the administration of US President Donald Trump. The administration described the deregulation as “restoring the American Dream” by saving over $1.3 trillion, and making commutes and business operations more affordable for American citizens.

The Trump administration reportedly urged other governments to pressure Vanuatu to withdraw its draft resolution. According to Al Jazeera, a cable sent by the US Department of State indicated the administration’s “strong objection” to the draft resolution and described the ICJ opinion as “misguided claims of international legal obligations.” Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s environment minister, reposted Al Jazeera’s article on X (formerly Twitter).

Prompt government actions are urgently necessary to achieve the Paris Agreement goal. A November 2025 report predicted that even if governments realize their “highest possible ambition,” the global average temperature will still have peaked at 1.7°C above pre-industrial levels for 40 years before declining to 1.2°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100.

From JURIST, Feb. 14. Used with permission.

See our last reports on the UN climate process, and the World Court advisory opinion.

Image: Wikimedia Commons