Child activists have moved themselves to the front of the environmental protection agenda and have made the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment a child rights issue. This was the subject of a presentation by Professor Ann Skelton titled ‘Children’s rights and the preservation of the environment for future generations’, which formed part of the University of Pretoria’s (UP) Expert Lecture Series.

Prof Skelton is a world-renowned child rights advocate, a professor of law at the University and the UNESCO Chair of Education Law in Africa at UP. She was appointed Chairperson of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in May 2023.

The UP Expert Lecture Series provides a public platform for University researchers to engage with an audience on significant developments in their fields of expertise. Prof Sunil Maharaj, Acting Vice-Principal for Research and Postgraduate Studies, commended Prof Skelton’s work and welcomed guests to the event, which saw several ambassadors and the Dean of UP’s Faculty of Law, Prof Elsabe Schoeman, among others, in attendance.

Prof Skelton highlighted the emergence of young activists such as Greta Thunberg, who initiated the Fridays for Future school climate strikes, a series of protests led by youth around the world.

“These young activists are now participating as speakers alongside world leaders at major environmental and climate gatherings,” Prof Skelton said.

She pointed out that children’s participation in activism is not new, citing the 1976 Soweto uprising that saw students take to the streets to protest against the oppressive apartheid regime as an example. Prof Skelton added that more recently, South Africa has shown leadership in recognising children’s right to peaceful protest, as established in the Constitutional Court judgement of Mlungwana v The State. The case recognised that protest might be the only avenue for political expression for children who cannot vote.

 Prof Skelton also referred to children’s role as plaintiffs in several landmark environmental cases. The earliest of these is the Filipino case Minors Oposa v Factoran (1993), which set a significant legal precedent, where children were granted the right to sue for environmental protection on behalf of both their own generation and unborn generations.

“The case’s recognition of intergenerational responsibility and its alignment with international principles contribute to the evolving discourse on the rights and obligations concerning future generations in the context of environmental preservation,” Prof Skelton explained. “It acknowledged that the child petitioners were not only exercising their right to a healthy environment but also fulfilling their duty to protect the rights of future generations. This ruling extended the idea that every generation has a responsibility to preserve nature’s harmony for the well-being of future generations.”

She offered examples of more recent child- and youth-led court cases, such as the Juliana v the United States case in which children sought an order declaring that they and future generations had a right to a stable and healthy climate system; the Neubauer case in Germany, which challenged the German government’s emissions plan; and a similar case in Canada, Mathur v Ontario. Prof Skelton also detailed a case against the extension of a coal mine in Australia and one against deforestation in Colombia.

Children are litigating at both regional and international level, and in this regard, Prof Skelton highlighted a case pending before the European Court of Human Rights as well as one brought by 16 children to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which developed the law on how states can be held accountable for harm caused by carbon emissions beyond their geographical borders.

Bringing the examples closer to home, Prof Skelton talked about two current cases before South African courts, known colloquially as the #CancelCoal case and the #DeadlyAir case. She indicated that UP’s Centre for Child Law has filed papers to enter as amicus curiae (friend of the court) in these matters.

Citing UNESCO’s Declaration on the Responsibility of the Present Generation towards Future Generations, Prof Skelton said: “Present generations have the responsibility to bequeath to future generations an earth that will not be irreversibly damaged by human activities, and each generation that temporarily inherits the earth should use natural resources reasonably.” She also highlighted the recent Maastricht Principles on the Human Rights of Future Generations, issued earlier this year by an expert working group.

The lecture underscored the significant role of children in advocating for environmental protection and climate justice, and the fact that their efforts encompass not just children’s rights but the rights of all generations, including future ones.

“We need to keep working on solutions to the environmental crisis,” Prof Skelton said. “And we had better make sure that children receive the kind of education today that will allow them to become the innovators of tomorrow.”