The UN General Assembly voted 141-8 to endorse a landmark International Court of Justice opinion finding that states are bound under international law to curb greenhouse gas emissions driving the climate crisis and protect states most affected by its fallout.

“Climate change is an unprecedented challenge of civilisational proportions,” the resolution states. “The well-being of present and future generations of humankind depends on our immediate and urgent response to it.”

Thursday’s historic vote was opposed by many of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers, reflecting the growing distance between nations fuelling the climate crisis and the vulnerable countries and people facing the brunt of its floods, droughts and extreme weather.

Voting against were Belarus, Iran, Israel, Liberia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Yemen — a coalition of major oil and gas producers, sanctioned states, and close US allies.

“The world’s highest court has spoken. Today, the General Assembly has answered,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, calling the vote “a powerful affirmation of international law, climate justice, science and the responsibility of states to protect people from the escalating climate crisis.”

Abstaining were a bloc of 28 countries spanning emerging emitters and traditional petrostates, including India, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Nigeria, the Czech Republic and Turkey, which will host COP31 in November.

The 141 in favour included Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom — wealthy historic emitters and current fossil fuel exporters now formally on record backing the court’s findings.

“Those least responsible for climate change are paying the highest price,” Guterres added. “That injustice must end.”

Youth wins 

For Vanuatu, the low-lying Pacific island nation that filed the original case at the ICJ and championed Thursday’s resolution, the vote was the culmination of a seven-year diplomatic campaign aimed at putting climate change inside the framework of binding international law.

The path from the ICJ to the General Assembly traces back to a 2019 campaign by 27 law students at the University of the South Pacific in Vanuatu’s capital, Port Vila, who lobbied Pacific governments to take the climate crisis to the world’s top international court.

Vanuatu took up the cause in 2021 and led an 18-month diplomatic push that resulted in the General Assembly’s unanimous request for an advisory opinion in March 2023. The UN court’s unanimous ruling, issued in July last year, capped the most participated advisory case in the ICJ’s history, with 96 states and 11 international organisations taking part in oral hearings, alongside a record 91 written submissions.

Leaders of the student campaign celebrated Thursday’s General Assembly victory, with Vishal Prasad, director of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, calling it “a turning point in accountability for damaging the climate.”

“The journey of this idea from classrooms in the Pacific to The Hague and the United Nations gives us continued hope that when people organise, the world can be moved to act,” Prasad said. “Communities on the frontlines, like in the Pacific, have been waiting far too long and continue to pay too high a price for the actions of others.”

Paris, renewables, and responsibility

Thursday’s resolution proposes a series of measures to meet the ICJ’s legal obligations, drawing on mainstays of UN climate negotiations.

It calls on all states to comply with the ICJ opinion by “preventing significant harm to the environment by acting with due diligence” and “using all means at their disposal to prevent activities carried out within their jurisdiction or control from causing significant harm to the climate system.”

The resolution recalls the court’s finding that a breach of those obligations is “an internationally wrongful act” that can require the responsible state to provide “full reparation to injured States in the form of restitution, compensation and satisfaction.”

It urges states to implement the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature goal, including by “tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030, transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner and so as to reach net zero by 2050.”

The resolution further calls for the phase-out of “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that do not address energy poverty or just transitions as soon as possible.”

“At a time when fragmentation between nations feels more visible than ever, the UN resolution endorsing the ICJ climate ruling offers a renewed path for international cooperation,” said Camille Cortez, senior campaigner on climate justice at Amnesty International.

“Fossil fuel infrastructure alone poses risks for the health and livelihoods of at least 2 billion people globally, roughly a quarter of the world’s population,” she added. “This new UN resolution paves the way for governments to show they stand for climate justice and has the potential to shape global climate accountability for years to come.”

‘So-called’ obligations 

The resolution drew sharp opposition from Washington, which led the small bloc voting against the text and used its floor time to challenge the legal foundations of the court’s ruling. US Ambassador to the UN Tammy Bruce, a former Fox News host, called the resolution “highly problematic,” dismissing the “so-called ‘obligations'” contained in the ICJ’s advisory ruling.

The United States, Bruce said, had opposed seeking an opinion from the UN court in the first place.

“Throughout the negotiation of this resolution, the United States has been consistent in conveying our opposition to this initiative,” Bruce told the assembly. “This resolution is highly problematic in calling on States to comply with so-called ‘obligations’ that are based on non-binding conclusions of the Court on which UN Member States’ views diverge.”

While the Hague-based ICJ’s rulings are not legally binding, they carry significant symbolic weight and are frequently used to substantiate legal arguments in national courts. The July 2025 opinion is already being woven into climate litigation around the world, with judges starting to cite it in their rulings.

While Washington “understands the concerns that Vanuatu and other countries have about specific environmental threats and the importance they attach to the Court’s opinion,” Bruce said, the resolution “improperly treats the Court’s opinion as irrefutably authoritative and as setting out binding obligations on States.”

The resolution also “amplifies legal errors from the Court’s opinion,” Bruce added, arguing the duty to prevent transboundary climate harm “would impermissibly interfere with each State’s sovereign rights to regulate and manage its own energy policy.”

“The opinion does not invent new law; it clarifies the law that already binds us,” said Odo Tevi, Vanuatu’s UN ambassador. “The ruling matters because the harm is real, and it is already here — for low-lying islands and coastlines, for communities facing drought and failed harvests, for people whose homes, livelihoods and cultures are being reshaped by forces they did nothing to set in motion.”

Saudi Arabia, which sided with the US against the resolution, called the inclusion of any reference to the ICJ’s opinion in negotiating texts at the last UN climate summit, COP30 in Belem, a “deep, deep, deep red line.”

That dynamic now sets the stage for COP31 in Antalya in November, where Turkey — among Thursday’s abstainers — will preside over talks already shadowed by the collapse of fossil fuel language at the previous summit.

With the Arab Group, Russia and the United States lined up against the court’s findings, and key emerging emitters refusing to back them, the path to translating Thursday’s legal victory into meaningful diplomatic outcomes looks steep.

“Climate change is an existential problem of planetary proportions that imperils all forms of life and the very health of our planet,” Guyana’s representative said, speaking on behalf of the Caribbean region. “It is crucial that we not only welcome the opinion in this moment but also ensure meaningful follow-up.”

Image Credits: UN, Gage Skidmore.