“European countries are not able to protect us. We are at the forefront of climate change”.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is scheduled to hear today a complaint filed by six Portuguese youths regarding the fight against climate change. According to Kuusiko, European countries have not taken sufficient steps to implement the Paris climate agreement.
According to young people, climate change causes them to constantly worry about their own health, because temperatures rise and the number of natural disasters increases. The Portuguese wildfires of 2017, in which two hundred people were killed and a huge amount of land was destroyed, acted as a bridge to take the case to court.
– European countries are unable to protect us. We are at the forefront of climate change in Europe: even in February it is sometimes 30 degrees. The heat waves keep getting worse, reasoned the member of the six Andre Oliveira15.
According to the Save the Children organization, children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis. According to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, children have the right to be heard and participate in decision-making concerning them.
– This right to be heard also applies to decisions related to curbing and combating climate change. The complaint made by the children is significant in terms of what kind of way it shows in terms of hearing children in the future, says Save the Children’s leading expert Tiina-Maria Levamo in the bulletin.
The EIT has to decide whether the matter belongs to it and whether the young people are victims, as they claim in their complaint. The young people who filed the complaint are between 11 and 24 years old