A group of Australians has accused their government of violating human rights by continuing to export coal and gas, in the first legal claim taken to an international body since the International Court of Justice ruled in 2025 that countries can be sued over climate change.
The ten litigants say their lives have been harmed by extreme weather – bushfires, floods, heatwaves, rising sea levels and toxic algal blooms – and blame the government’s support of fossil fuel companies. Dr Barry Traill, a wildlife ecologist and volunteer firefighter, is one of them. In 2009, several of his friends died during the devastating Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, despite being prepared and experienced. “That deeply changed me,” Traill said, and “it became clear that the old rules around fires and survival no longer applied.”
“Australians accuse government of violating human rights by exporting coal and gas in first UN claim since 2025 ICJ ruling.”
In 2019, he was on the frontlines battling severe blazes in Queensland during the Black Summer fires, where he saw that climate change was not a future problem. “It is already killing people and hurting lives, landscapes and communities across Australia,” he said. “Continuing to allow coal and gas companies to increase pollution, while people face worsening disasters, is a profound failure of responsibility.”
Brendon Donohue has also joined the claim, describing how he was trapped in his home for 10 days in 2022 when floods in Brisbane damaged the power supply of his apartment block, leaving lifts, intercom and exits inaccessible. “Because I live with blindness and mobility challenges, climate impacts affect me differently and can make everyday life much harder to navigate safely,” he said.
Prof Anne Poelina, an Indigenous woman from the Kimberley region in Western Australia, describes being displaced from the area around the Fitzroy River, one of the state’s most important waterways, because of catastrophic flooding. “When the river is healthy, our people are healthy,” she said, and “when the river suffers, our people suffer.” “What concerns me most is the intergenerational loss of cultural knowledge,” she added, as “so much of our knowledge is not written down”, but passed on by being physically present on the land.
Any decision by the UN is not legally binding, but Australia – one of the world’s largest coal and gas exporters – would be expected to respond. The BBC has contacted Environment Minister Murray Watt for comment.