New UN Case: Australia's Coal and Gas Exports Violate Human Rights

Author: Tasreba Chowdhury

June 26, 2026

HRCC commends the actions of this group of Australians. We encourage a thorough investigation to ensure justice for those affected by climate harm. We also urge the Australian government to take accountability for its actions, to decrease exports of fossil fuels, to develop and utilize more renewable energy sources, as well as to protect those vulnerable to the harmful impacts of climate change.

[Image credit: Mitchell Luo on Unsplash]

A case was filed with the United Nations (UN) by a group of ten Australians, accusing the  Australian government of human rights violations from continued fossil fuel exports. They are being represented by the Human Rights Law Centre, Environmental Justice Australia, and Earthjustice. 

This legal claim was the first filed for climate harm taken to an international body since the International Court of Justice’s ruling in 2025, which stated that countries can be sued over climate change. The ruling arose from the Pacific Island State Vanuatu’s request for an advisory opinion from the Court on climate change. The Court declared that member states have an obligation to protect the environment from greenhouse gas emissions to guarantee the enjoyment of human rights, and may acquire legal responsibility if they break these obligations. Australia was one of the 140 countries to pass a UN resolution that backed the legal ruling.

One of the ten claimants, Brendon Donohue, reported being trapped in his second-story apartment for ten days in 2022 due to flooding in Brisbane’s West End. Being legally blind with movement limited by Peters-plus syndrome, Mr. Donohue was unable to evacuate as flood waters cut off the power supply to his apartment, which subsequently caused the lifts, intercom, and exits to become inaccessible.

Another claimant, Dr. Barry Traill, a wildlife ecologist and volunteer firefighter, noted that several of his friends died during the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, a state in southeastern Australia. A total of 173 people died as a result of these fires; Dr. Traill was a responder on the frontlines. 

Additionally, claimant Professor Anne Poelina, an Indigenous woman from the Kimberly region in western Australia, was displaced from the Fitzroy River due to flooding; the Fitzroy River, or Martuwarra, is sacred land and is heavily protected under Native Title rights. What concerned her the most was the loss of the ability to pass down Indigenous cultural knowledge to future generations, much of which necessitates being present on the land. 

Latisha Francis, another claimant of Indigenous descent, emphasized that displacements are troubling from Indigenous perspectives and cited that much of her culture involved having access to the ocean. She spent the last year handling a toxic algal bloom caused by a spike in sea temperatures, which killed wildlife and drove her family away from what had been their home for thousands of years.

Despite differing experiences, all ten claimants have been adversely affected by the impacts of climate change that can be linked to the Australian government’s continued support for fossil fuel exports. Australia is one of the largest exporters of fossil fuels in the world, and 80% of the coal and gas mined in Australia is sent overseas to be burned. The Australian government excludes these fossil fuels from its climate policies and goals because it is sent overseas. 

Hannah White, Senior Lawyer at Environmental Justice Australia, noted that the detrimental impacts of climate change from Australia’s coal and gas production and dispersal persist beyond the country’s borders, and she argued that Australia’s government must be held responsible for it. A report published by Dr. Dan Calverley, a researcher at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and Professor Kevin Anderson, a member of the Tyndall Centre, concludes that Australia’s projected fossil fuel exports do not even come close to the global carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5℃.

If the UN committee rules in favor of the claimants, it could recommend actions for the Australian government to take and would set expectations for its response. However, since the decision would not be legally binding, the recommendations may not be enforceable. The committee’s decisions do carry considerable legal and international implications. Given that Australia was one of the countries that backed the International Court of Justice’s 2025 ruling, its government would be expected to respond to the Committee’s recommendations.

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Glossary

• Accountability- the fact of being responsible for what you do and able to give a satisfactory reason for it, or the degree to which this happens.

• Adverse- having a negative or harmful effect on something.

• Advisory opinion- a court's nonbinding interpretation of law. It states the opinion of a court upon a legal question submitted by a legislature, government official, or another court. 

• Binding- (especially of an agreement) that cannot be legally avoided or stopped.

• Claim- a set of operative facts creating a right enforceable in court.

• Claimant- a person who goes to court to make a legal complaint against someone else.

• Climate change- a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/ or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer.

• Climate harm- Adverse impacts of climate change-related extreme weather (e.g., hurricanes, heavy rainfall, heatwaves) and slow-onset events (e.g., sea level rise, glacier melting, desertification) on people’s lives, livelihoods, and rights, and on the environment, which can be of material (economic) and/or moral (non-economic) in nature.

• Detrimental- causing harm or damage.

• Displaced- having been forced to leave your home, for example, by a war or dangerous event.

• Enforce- to make people obey a law, or to make a particular situation happen or be accepted.

• Export- to send goods to another country for sale.

• Fossil fuels- such as coal, oil, and gas– are non-renewable resources that take hundreds of millions of years to form. Fossil fuels, when burned to produce energy, cause harmful greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide.

• Global carbon budget- sums up all anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO_₂) to the atmosphere, and all the carbon removed from the atmosphere by land and ocean. This allows us to account for the rise in atmospheric CO_₂, which drives climate warming.

• Indigenous- the original inhabitants of a region, particularly those who maintain cultural, social, and historical ties to their ancestral lands. This term is significant as it highlights the unique identities and traditions of Indigenous Peoples. Understanding these perspectives is crucial in promoting cultural diversity and environmental stewardship.

• Obligation- a legal or moral duty to do something.

• Peters plus syndrome- an inherited condition that is characterized by eye abnormalities, short stature, an opening in the lip (cleft lip) with or without an opening in the roof of the mouth (cleft palate), distinctive facial features, and intellectual disability.

• Renewable energy- energy derived from natural sources that are replenished at a higher rate than they are consumed. 

• Ruling- a court’s decision on a matter presented in a lawsuit.

• Sue- to take legal action against a person or organization, especially by making a legal claim for money because of some harm that they have caused you.

• Toxic algal blooms or harmful algal blooms (HABs)- occur when colonies of algae — simple plants that live in the sea and freshwater — grow out of control and produce toxic or harmful effects on people, fish, shellfish, marine mammals, and birds. The human illnesses caused by HABs, though rare, can be debilitating or even fatal.