Source: Amnesty International –
In 2019, a group of 27 law students from the University of the South Pacific in Vanuatu began campaigning to take the issue of human-induced climate change and its impacts on human rights to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Their initiative led the ICJ to issue a landmark Advisory Opinion in July 2025, which made it clear that governments have a legal obligation to protect human rights against climate change.
Today, the Pacific islands are leading on a draft UN climate change resolution to turn the ICJ’s groundbreaking Advisory Opinion into a roadmap for action and accountability, pushing leaders to phase out the fossil fuels and meet their human rights obligations.
Fijian-born Vishal Prasad is the director at Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC). Here he shares about the journey of turning “heartbreak into action.”
“In late 2019, I joined a group of 27 law students from the University of the South Pacific in Vanuatu that came together to take climate change to the world’s highest court. We knew all too well the cost of the climate crisis to the region.
We came from communities where a monthly king-tide means watchful, sleepless nights and countries where economic development built slowly over decades could be wiped away by multiple cyclones. We came of age alongside multiple UN climate conferences like COP where promises of urgent change and necessary remedy were made. Yet our people continue to wait and hope for these promises to be met.