Australia Hit With UN Human Rights Complaint Over Ongoing Support For Coal And Gas Exports
Story co-published with One Earth Now
In 2022 the city of Brisbane, Australia saw one of its worst flooding events in decades. Torrential rains brought over 31 inches of water into the city over three days, toppling the previous three-day rainfall record from 1974. The Brisbane River swelled, peaking at over 3.8 meters (over 12 feet), inundating area neighborhoods and properties.
Sama Youhana was a high school senior at the time who lived with her family right alongside the river. She recalls the night the flooding hit:
“It was the middle of the night when the water started coming up through the garage. Suddenly everyone was rushing to move what they could and work out what to do next. That night remains one of the most frightening experiences of my life.”
Brendan Donohue, a disability advocate living with blindness, found himself trapped alone in his apartment for 10 days during the floods that knocked out the building’s power, shutting down elevator and intercom service and leaving exits inaccessible for someone with his condition.
“Because of my blindness, I could not read the emergency signage showing where temporary entrances and exits were located. My support workers could not reach me because roads were flooded,” Donohue recalled. “I remember feeling terrified because I had no idea how I would safely leave the building if conditions worsened,” he added. “I felt isolated, confused and unsafe. I felt disregarded.”
Now, these two Brisbane flood survivors have joined eight other Australians who have similarly been directly affected by extreme weather and climate change impacts in bringing a landmark case before the United Nation’s Human Rights Committee. Dubbed the “Hard Truths case,” it accuses the Australian government of violating the 10 claimants’ human rights through its ongoing support of coal and gas exports, which make up the lion’s share of Australia’s overall contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. It is the first case of its kind specifically challenging a country’s fossil fuel exports on the grounds that they violate international human rights law. And it is the first case to be brought before a UN body since the International Court of Justice delivered its historic advisory opinion last year affirming that climate action is a legal obligation.
“All governments have a legal duty to act on the climate crisis, as affirmed by the International Court of Justice last year. The Australian government is failing that responsibility by allowing unchecked exports of coal and gas,” Ramin Pejan, deputy managing attorney of the international program at Earthjustice, said in statement.
Earthjustice along with Environmental Justice Australia and the Human Rights Law Centre are representing the 10 claimants, who come from across Australia and include teachers, a volunteer firefighter, disability advocates, students, and First Nations peoples and indigenous leaders. They have all experienced devastating climate impacts like extreme heat, catastrophic bushfires and flooding, and toxic algal blooms. These impacts, they say, will only get worse unless governments start taking responsibility for their actions that are exacerbating the climate emergency.
“We are seeing more extreme heat, changing seasons, disruptions to cultural practices and growing challenges for communities trying to maintain their connection to the places that sustain them,” said Rikki Dank, a Gudanji and Wakaya Traditional Owner from the Barkly Tablelands in the Northern Territory. “Australia continues to play a significant role in the climate crisis through the coal and gas it exports, while communities like mine are left to deal with the consequences. I believe there must be accountability for the harms already occurring and for those that will continue if meaningful action is not taken.”
Australia is the world’s second-largest fossil fuel exporter, behind only Russia. The coal and gas that Australia exports contribute to about 3.5 percent of global carbon emissions annually, and these emissions amount to a level that is three to four times the country’s domestic emissions. The vast majority, around 80 percent, of the coal and gas extracted in Australia is shipped overseas for export, according to Environmental Justice Australia. And yet the emissions from these exports are excluded from Australia’s climate policies and targets.
Environmental and human rights legal experts argue that Australia is acting unlawfully by failing to take responsibility for the climate harms linked to its fossil fuel exports.
“Every tonne of coal and gas we export makes Australia’s climate more dangerous and Australians less safe. We have the resources and responsibility to phase out fossil fuels. Instead, by doubling down on exports, Australia is standing outside the law,” said Gillian Moon, research lead for the Australian Climate Accountability Project and lead author of a report published last September by the Australian Human Rights Institute, which found that Australia was in breach of its legal obligations by failing to limit its fossil fuel exports.
“Our clients want the Albanese government to face the hard truth that successive governments have avoided,” said Hannah White, senior lawyer with Environmental Justice Australia. “Climate harm caused by Australia's coal and gas doesn't stop at a border, and neither does Australia's responsibility for it.”
White said the claimants are seeking a declaration from the UN Human Rights Committee that Australia’s continued support for coal and gas exports is unlawful. Specifically, they want the Committee to tell Australia that it should stop approving and subsidizing fossil fuel export projects, and that it should come up with a plan to phase out coal and gas exports. Since the Human Rights Committee is not a court, any findings or recommendations it makes would not be legally enforceable.
But Earthjustice lawyer Noni Austin said this does not mean that the Committee’s decision would be insignificant. “It carries a lot of weight. It carries moral weight, reputational weight, diplomatic weight, and international legal weight as well. And governments are expected by the international community to act on the recommendations of the UN Human Rights Committee,” Austin said during a recent webinar discussing the case, which was officially filed last month.
This is not the first time that Australia has faced a UN complaint over its climate inaction. In 2019 eight Torres Strait Islanders lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Committee arguing that the Australian government was failing to protect them from climate impacts like sea level rise and flooding. The Committee issued its decision in 2022, finding that Australia did in fact violate their rights to culture and to private and family life by not adequately protecting them from adverse climate impacts.
The Hard Truths case is seeking to build upon that groundbreaking precedent. The legal team says the case is also on especially solid ground following the ICJ’s climate opinion (issued in July 2025), which explicitly called out fossil fuels and suggested that countries’ ongoing support for fossil fuel activities could be considered an “internationally wrongful act.”
“I joined this case because I want decision-makers to understand the real human consequences of climate inaction and their responsibility to prevent foreseeable harm,” said Jack Egan, one of the claimants whose house on the New South Wales’ South Coast burned down during the 2019 “Black Summer” bushfires. “I also hope this case helps build momentum for stronger legal protections for current and future generations, building on the growing recognition under international law that governments have obligations to protect people from climate harm.”
Australia is not the only country currently facing a claim that its inadequate climate response and promotion of fossil fuels violate international human rights law. Last September, lawyers with the Oregon-based nonprofit law firm Our Children’s Trust filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of 15 of the original 21 youth plaintiffs from the landmark Juliana v. US climate case. The petition argues that the US government is violating international law through its perpetuation of a fossil fuel-based energy system.
Like the Hard Truths case in Australia, the youth petition against the US seeks to force the government to confront the uncomfortable truth that it is actively causing harm by exacerbating the climate crisis, as one legal adviser to the US case explained.
“This courageous action aims to tell the truth and do something about it,” said James R. May, of counsel to Our Children’s Trust and founder of Dignity Rights Advocates. “The truth isn’t pretty—the highest court in the world, the International Court of Justice, and the highest court in the Americas, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, have both recognized a climate emergency and found that climate change violates basic human rights, especially for children. The United States, once a global leader on human rights and the rule of law, doesn’t seem to care much anymore. But it can do better. The Commission’s involvement can help return the US to a position of strength, leadership, and inspiration. The world is watching.”
