Don’t Let Wealthy Fossil Fuel-Exporting Nations and Petrostates Shut the Door on Expanded State Accountability for Human Rights-Based Climate Action!

IN A NUTSHELL
Author's note
In 2026, UN Member States opened the door to scaled-up monitoring of rights-based climate action outside of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) framework.

 Don’t let wealthy fossil fuel-exporting nations and petrostates slam it shut!

By David Patterson

LLM, MSc, HonMFPH, PhD Candidate

Department of Transboundary Legal Studies

Groningen Centre for Health Law

Faculty of Law, University of Groningen 

By the same Author on PEAH: see HERE

Don’t Let Wealthy Fossil Fuel-Exporting Nations and Petrostates Shut the Door on Expanded State Accountability for Human Rights-Based Climate Action!

 

In May 2026, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) opened the door to expanded State accountability for human rights-based climate action. Unless States, civil society, and climate-aligned private sector actors move quickly and collectively, this door will close and the current dysfunctional global climate regime, and global warming, will continue.

For thirty years the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conferences of the Parties (COPs) have been the principal global forum to debate urgent climate action. Throughout these decades, self-interested States have used the rule of procedure requiring a consensus to veto commitments to phasing out fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change. The UN General Assembly, where majority voting rules, has nonetheless seemed powerless to act.

This all changed one year ago when, in July 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued its unanimous, groundbreaking advisory opinion on climate change. Critically, the ICJ held that States have legal obligations arising from other UN treaties and customary international law in addition to the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement. This fundamentally shifted the international legal and geopolitical landscape. Wealthy fossil fuel-exporting nations and petrostates can no longer deny their full legal obligations. On 20 May 2026, by a majority vote (141 States in favour, 8 against) the UNGA welcomed the ICJ advisory opinion in its entirety. Most importantly, the UNGA requested the UN Secretary-General to prepare a report on ways to advance compliance with all the obligations to address climate change identified by the ICJ. The report is due for the 82nd UNGA session, in September 2027. The UN agency (yet to be identified) which drafts the report will invite States to provide input. It is critical that climate-progressive States propose ways to better engage the UNGA in UN system monitoring and reporting on human rights and climate change. The UNGA will consider the Secretary-General’s report at a subsequent session (currently scheduled for September 2028). Of course, the UNGA could then go much further in calling for structural reforms to address the climate emergency.

We have long had comprehensive guidance on States’ human rights obligations to address climate change. The UN Human Rights Council, the Universal Periodic Review process, the UN human rights treaties and their monitoring committees, the UN special rapporteurs and other experts, and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have all provided sound and timely guidance on States’ human rights obligations in the context of climate change. Completely missing, however, has been UNGA acknowledgement and periodic monitoring and reporting on climate change as a human rights issue. There were no references to human rights in UNGA resolutions on climate change in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2024.

Contrast this with the UN response to another global emergency – the HIV pandemic. In the face of exploding rates of HIV infection, illness and death, particularly in the Global South, in 2001 the UNGA held a Special Session (UNGASS) on HIV/AIDS and requested periodic reports on States’ progress in implementing their commitments to HIV prevention and treatment. The UN HIV monitoring framework includes a report card from civil society alongside government health data – a UN first. In June 2026 the UNGA reaffirmed its commitment to the HIV pandemic as a human rights issue and requested the UN Secretary-General to continue to report to the UNGA on progress achieved.

Wealthy fossil fuel-exporting nations and petrostates certainly don’t want the UNGA to spotlight the health and other cradle-to-grave harms of fossil fuels from a right to health perspective. Some have already argued that any new mechanism should sit within the UNFCCC (where, of course, these States have a veto). However, the majority of UN States want to see compliance with all the legal obligations to address climate change identified by the ICJ. The next step is to ensure the Secretary-General’s report reflects this clear imperative. Climate-progressive States must follow up on their 2026 resolution and ensure the SG’s report proposes a comprehensive, rights-based framework for UNGA reporting on States’ action to respect, protect and fulfil all human rights in the context of climate change, and other obligations identified by the ICJ. Meanwhile, the WHO Director-General should immediately declare climate change a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), which is the first recommendation of WHO’s Pan-European Commission on Climate and Health. The UNGA should convene in an ‘UNGASS on the Climate Emergency’ at the earliest opportunity.

Wealthy fossil fuel-exporting nations and petrostates will do almost anything to limit the options in the forthcoming SG’s report. The UN General Assembly has opened the door briefly to expanded climate accountability. Progressive States must step through this door before those profiting from the climate emergency lock it from the inside.