Source: Amnesty International –
By Nciko wa Nciko and Samrawit Getaneh
The African Union declared 2025 to be the “Year of Justice for Africans and People of African Descent through Reparations”. The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights has an opportunity to make that more than just a slogan, as it considers the current request for an advisory opinion before it, on states’ human rights obligations in the context of climate change. It has an opportunity to issue a landmark opinion affirming the link between colonialism and the harms of climate change to people(s) across the continent. Such an opinion would mark a major step forward from the International Court of Justice and in Africa’s fight for reparative justice.
On July 30, 2025, Amnesty International published a report recounting how, during the French colonial era in Madagascar, authorities deliberately unleashed harmful, genetically manipulated cochineal parasites across some 40,000 hectares (98,850 acres) of a drought-resilient vegetation in the Androy region in Madagascar’s deep South.
Between 1924 and 1929, the parasites destroyed roughly 100km (62 miles) of vegetation cover each year.
Madagascar’s droughts are being intensified by human-induced climate change, driven largely by high-income historically high emitting countries, such as France – the very colonial power that left the Antandroy people vulnerable.
Nciko wa Nciko and Samrawit Getaneh
This was not a minor ecological loss. The vegetation had sustained the Antandroy people for generations, providing food and helping to preserve groundwater through chronic droughts. Its destruction erased a vital natural defence system against those droughts. More than a century later, the destruction has left the Antandroy people exposed to recurring mass hunger, displacement, and death whenever drought strikes.
Furthermore, Madagascar’s droughts are being intensified by human-induced climate change, driven largely by high-income historically high emitting countries, such as France – the very colonial power that left the Antandroy people vulnerable.